Twilight of a demigod

It's not a remarkable movie. It stars and was directed by Clint Eastwood, who's 91 now. That's what's remarkable about “Cry Macho.”

When he won multiple Oscars for 1992's “Unforgiven” including best picture and best director, it seemed the crowning glory of a stellar career, first as the world's most recognizable action hero, than as one of Hollywood's most eclectic and reliable directors.

“Unforgiven” was a masterpiece – an anti-Western painted in mythic strokes, a tale of an old gunslinger beyond redemption pressed back into service to save a frontier town from its sadistic sheriff (played by Gene Hackman, another of its Oscar winners).

It seemed like the kind of thing to hang your laurels on and head for the golf course.

When Eastwood was honored at the 2002 Maui Film Festival, I had the opportunity to ask if he felt his career had been fulfilled. Actually no, he confided. He still had some films he wanted to make, some stories he wanted to tell.

“What are they going to do to me, right?” he asked, referring to front office of Warner Bros., where he had fed the coffers for so many decades. The flinty gleam still shone in his eyes, now framed by crow's feet. He sounded more like a guy used to paying dues than a Cinemascope icon.

He sounded – like the handful of artistic demigods I had been privileged to interview in my career – humble.

That was decades ago now.

His later films included directing and co-starring with Meryl Streep in “Bridges of Madison County”; shooting “Letters From Iwo Jima” in Japanese with English subtitles; and guiding “Million Dollar Baby,” “Mystic River” and “American Sniper” to more Oscar nods. But his own fragile mortality has provided onscreen mileposts along the way.

While the cranky bigot he played in 2008's “Gran Turino” felt like it was going to be his final word on the subject, it turns out he was still a youthful 78 at the time.

“Cry Macho” picks up the theme more than a decade later, this time casting him as Mike Milo, a long-ago bronc-busting rodeo champ sidelined by a broken back that sent his life into a downward spiral of painkillers, booze and failure. The script, co-adapted by N. Richard Nash from his novel, calls on Mike to repay a debt to his former boss, wealthy Texas ranch owner Howard Polk (Dwight Yoakam). Polk wants him to go down to Mexico and pick up his teenage son Rafo (Eduardo Minett) from his mother.

She's wealthy enough to have body guards, and crazy enough to need them, according to Polk.

Hmmm, a father-son odyssey that turns the Mexican highway into a road to redemption … If this conjures memories of director Sam Peckinpah, master of the contemporary Western, that could be because Nash's novel was published in 1975 when Peckinpah was still walking the earth. More like prowling it like a desert wolf, actually.

When Eastwood first got the rights, according to Wikipedia, he wanted to cast Robert Mitchum in the role, figuring he wasn't old enough himself. Reminders of the story's age keep creeping across the screen, from the boatlike Detroit sedans to the crucial role of pay phones before Steve Jobs changed the world.

Being a product of a different world in a different time, “Cry Macho” moves at a pace close to slow-motion compared to current action-adventure norms. The molasses-like pacing informs everything about the production, beginning with the way Eastwood delivers his lines, anachronistically addressing his traveling companion as “Kid” just for the good measure.

The surprises in the plot boil down to the fact that there aren't many. Today's obligatory car chases, gun fights, fist fights and physics-defying special effects are all but nonexistent. In their place are reflections and realizations by the old man and the young man about, you know, what it all means.

It's easy to dismiss “Cry Macho” as a vanity project for its director-star, a way of insisting that he's still “got it” as he enters his ninth decade. If machismo is, in fact, overrated, he's still the guy to deliver the message. After all, if Anthony Hopkins can win an Oscar for playing a man in his 80s undone by the ravages of dementia, Clint's here to show that when a mustang needs to be broken, he's still capable of getting back in the saddle. Literally.

But for me there's a different takeaway from “Cry Macho.” There's something comforting in the speed you can travel on a two-lane road, as opposed to a highway. There's something welcoming in the unassuming little village where they wind up for a while. Loving families can be forged of strangers, even ones who don't speak your language over the dinner table.

The slow, rather than action-packed, speed of the unfolding story feels more like a parable than an adrenaline rush. And rather than a work of ego, “Cry Macho” is just one more of those stories Clint Eastwood wanted to tell.

Moviemakers make movies. That's how they communicate, that's how they live, that's what they do.