As streaming companies inch nearer and nearer to reinventing cable outright, they’ve began swapping movies and exhibits which may’ve as soon as been unique to a single platform. That is truly benefitted a title like “Cry Macho,” which just lately migrated from Warner Bros.’ Max onto Netflix. Based on the Netflix viewership aggregator FlixPatrol, Eastwood’s neo-Western cracked the service’s prime 10 within the U.S. on September 18, 2023, and even climbed a few spots the day after. That makes “Cry Macho” the newest Eastwood providing to take action after his 2018 crime drama “The Mule,” which equally charted on Netflix earlier this yr.
In some methods, the historical past behind “Cry Macho” is extra fascinating than the precise movie. It started as an unique screenplay that author N. Richard Nash was unable to get produced, which led to him reconfiguring it as a novel in 1975. After that, Nash was capable of efficiently re-pitch the script, just for the venture to fall into limbo because it handed by way of a number of palms over the following 4 a long time. Eastwood himself was as soon as hooked up to star within the movie throughout that interval, as was Arnold Schwarzenegger as just lately as 2011. It might need been the right comeback automobile for Arnold, too, permitting him to reinvent himself following his post-Governator return to appearing.
As an alternative, “Cry Macho” will seemingly function a coda to Eastwood’s appearing profession (he is nonetheless planning to direct one ultimate movie, “Juror No. 2”). As the story of a seasoned buckaroo hoping to cross on one final piece of hard-earned knowledge to a youthful era, it is an appropriately self-reflexive and poetic position for him to exit on. Even when he was too outdated by the point he lastly received round to enjoying it.