Clint Eastwood's 2021 Western Fulfilled Something Major For The Actor

Clint Eastwood's hugely successful career on both sides of the camera has yielded numerous successes, but if there's one genre everyone associates him with, it's Westerns. From his classic work with Sergio Leone to Eastwood solidifying his separation from directors like John Ford with the seminal "Unforgiven," the filmmaking legend has established many times over that no one does Old West quite like him. 1992's dark "Unforgiven," in particular, is an iconic spiritual sequel to Eastwood's classic role as the Man with No Name, and won four Academy Awards for its portrayal of aging gunfighter Will Munny and his world. 

Perhaps surprisingly, this magnum opus didn't mark the end of the filmmaker's Western era. In 2021, Eastwood rode again in "Cry Macho," the neo-Western that marries "Unforgiven" with shades of another patented Clint hit, "Gran Torino." It seems fairly clear that Eastwood saw something truly unique in this story about a washed-out rodeo star's mission to retrieve his old boss Howard's (Dwight Yokam) son Rafo (Eduardo Minett), because in his 2011 GQ joint interview with Leonardo DiCaprio, he specifically discussed the difficulty of finding fresh Western scripts:

"When you become a matinee idol, like [DiCaprio] here, you get offered a lot of the same stuff that you were successful with before. I've watched that happen for almost sixty years now. And the only way you beat the fad is by going against it. On the other hand, I never wanted to do a Western again, and then 'Unforgiven' came. And I've never done one since, because I haven't found [a script] that took the Western in a new direction. So it's probably my last. But if somebody came along and gave me a unique script, I'd probably go, 'Hell yes. Put me in there!'"

Clint Eastwood was 91 when he made "Cry Macho," but he'd been kicking the script's wheels since before he even made "Unforgiven." In fact, he was first offered "Cry Macho" way back in 1988, but since he felt he was too young for the role, he originally wanted to cast Robert Mitchum as the main character, Mike Milo. This never happened, and since no one else bit either, Eastwood ended up keeping the film on the back burner until he aged into the role. As he told the Los Angeles Times: 

""I always thought I'd go back and look at that. It was something I had to grow into. One day, I just felt it was time to revisit it. It's fun when something's your age, when you don't have to work at being older."

It's interesting to know that Eastwood was toying with "Cry Macho" well before "Unforgiven." It's also a testament to the impact Nick Schenk and N. Richard Nash's script made on him that he kept it in mind for all these years — and chose to revisit it in his nineties. Though the critics found the movie comparatively underwhelming, its complicated origin story alone makes "Cry Macho" a worthy inclusion in Eastwood's filmography.