Cry Macho - not great

I watched it on HBO Max and I really liked it. I totally agree with you on the kid's acting, though, it was pretty bad. The rooster was great, lol.

Overall, I did enjoy the story, and I enjoyed Clint. 7/10 for me, but I'm biased by Clint, he's the last of old Hollywood.

I was disappointed as well. I loved Gran Torino and The Mule, but Cry Macho does not measure up to those two previous efforts. I found the story to be meh. Also, I was expecting something exciting or surprising at the end, but it turned out to be rather anticlimatic.

Here is what I wrote to a relative a few days ago:

Cry Macho is a "very good" film—highly engrossing, attractively photographed, and fluidly edited. The movie is at once minimalist and sumptuously atmospheric. It represents a revival of classicism in more ways than one (including the idea of Mexico and what it may suggest in the Western experience), along with a further critique of masculinity from Eastwood.

I concur that Eduardo Minett's performance as Rafo, the thirteen-year old boy, is not the best and will not be cited among the dozens—if not hundreds—of outstanding performances that Eastwood has elicited in his fifty years of directing films. I enjoyed Eastwood's performance, though. First, there is a certain cinematic pleasure that comes just from watching Clint Eastwood walking around in a flat-brimmed Western hat, especially on the big screen. Second, he shows the character's vulnerabilities—he plays his age, never tries to fight through matters, observes and calculates, relies on his quiet cunning, walks stiffly like a man who has suffered a broken back in his past. In other words, the character is supposed to be limited, supposed to be elderly (at least as interpreted for and by the star), and Eastwood plays that figure true to form. (Incidentally, as Nora indicates, just the fact that Clint Eastwood is starring in a theatrical film in his nineties is incredible. John Wayne, who possessed great longevity in his day, never made it to seventy on the screen. Meanwhile, contemporaries of Eastwood's such as Gene Hackman and Jack Nicholson have not been seen on the screen in years.) 

I did not find Cry Macho to be "great" and arguably the best movie of the year like several recent Eastwood films (American Sniper, Sully, The Mule, Richard Jewell), nor is it elegantly experimental like The 15:17 to Paris. But I found it charming, pleasurable. Eastwood's ultimate characterization of machismo in Cry Macho is quite profound, thoughtful, and intelligent, and also something of a revision to Western culture, which still celebrates what his character comes to deplore. And as I indicated earlier, the film's treatment of Mexico and what the country potentially means in Western culture harkens back to a much earlier era, providing a potent contrast not only to the politics of our current time but also to cinematic representations of the land dating back nearly sixty years. In that reversion to classicism, there is refreshing irony. 

Similarly, I enjoyed the classical way in which the film was shot. For instance, there is one scene in a roadside diner (the one where Rafo attempts to order tequila, only to be rebuffed by Eastwood's Mike Milo) where Eastwood—the director—keeps coming back to a medium-range still shot with his character on the left of the table and Rafo on the right. It is a wonderful, archetypal shot, especially with Eastwood in that flat-brimmed hat, and the filmmaker keeps returning to it, allowing the composition to soak in like an iconic Western painting in an art museum. Classic Western directors such as John Ford and Budd Boetticher might have been proud. 

Ironically, in some ways I analogize Cry Macho to the films of another famous Western director, Sam Peckinpah. The material, setting, and landscapes here have a lot in common with Peckinpah's interests, and as in so many Peckinpah movies, Eastwood takes Cry Macho into something of a detour, amiably transcending narrative convention to search for something deeper, something more meaningful. The difference is that Peckinpah, of course, was also preoccupied with bloody displays of violence, whereas Eastwood in Cry Macho is not, so the diversions in this film are smoother, seamless. 

I agree with this review from New York Times critic A.O. Scott (although I totally disagree with Scott's political characterizations of The Mule and Richard Jewell, which I find to be woeful, deductive misinterpretations): ‘Cry Macho’ Review: The Good, the Bad and the Poultry. 

Ultimately, the material for another powerful masterwork did not exist here, but I still enjoy and appreciate what Eastwood made of it.

There is a gentle romance, but no sex scenes.