Clint Eastwood's Failed 2021 Awards Contender Found A New Audience On Netflix

As (in)famous as Clint Eastwood is for playing reticent gun-slingers and starring in violent conservative fantasies, he's spent nearly as much of his career making films that warn against the dangers of machismo and letting your sons grow up to be cowboys. His 2021 directorial effort, "Cry Macho," is a chip off the same block. Eastwood stars in the '80s-set drama as Mike Milo, a former rodeo star who agrees to deliver a teen boy named Rafo (Eduardo Minett) from Mexico City to his father in Texas. Along the way, Mike tries to dissuade Rafo of the notion that acting "macho" is any way to go through life. "Macho" is also the name of Rafo's rooster, who tags along with the duo. I'm betting you never expected an Eastwood film to share a plot point with Disney's "Moana," did you?

The general response to "Cry Macho" was polite if decidedly lukewarm. Reviews praised its low-key filmmaking and thoughtful messaging while also criticizing the nonagenarian Eastwood for casting himself in a role that he was 20 to 30 years too old for by that point. In terms of the box office, the film was hurt by being released in September 2021, at which time the market was still firmly in recovery mode from the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns, especially when it came to adult dramas. That it launched day-and-date in theaters and on streaming as a result of Warner Bros.' 2021 release strategy didn't help matters. 

But you know what they say (and by "they" I really mean "me just winging things"): Today's failed awards contender is tomorrow's hit on Netflix.

As streaming services inch closer and closer to reinventing cable outright, they've started swapping films and shows that might've once been exclusive to a single platform. That's actually benefitted a title like "Cry Macho," which recently migrated from Warner Bros.' Max onto Netflix. According to the Netflix viewership aggregator FlixPatrol, Eastwood's neo-Western cracked the service's top 10 in the U.S. on September 18, 2023, and even climbed a couple of spots the day after. That makes "Cry Macho" the latest Eastwood offering to do so after his 2018 crime drama "The Mule," which similarly charted on Netflix earlier this year.

In some ways, the history behind "Cry Macho" is more interesting than the actual film. It began as an original screenplay that writer N. Richard Nash was unable to get produced, which led to him reconfiguring it as a novel in 1975. After that, Nash was able to successfully re-pitch the script, only for the project to fall into limbo as it passed through multiple hands over the next four decades. Eastwood himself was once attached to star in the film during that period, as was Arnold Schwarzenegger as recently as 2011. It might have been the perfect comeback vehicle for Arnold, too, allowing him to reinvent himself following his post-Governator return to acting.

Instead, "Cry Macho" will likely serve as a coda to Eastwood's acting career (he's still planning to direct one final film, "Juror No. 2"). As the tale of a seasoned buckaroo hoping to pass on one last piece of hard-earned wisdom to a younger generation, it's an appropriately self-reflexive and poetic role for him to go out on. Even if he was too old by the time he finally got around to playing it.