Cry Macho

Arizona Republic by Bill Goodykoontz

There is a craggy kind of elegance to Cry Macho. You know what you’re getting for the most part. This does not include a lot of surprises. It does include comfort in the familiar. Eastwood has earned that, too.

Consequence by Clint Worthington

One of Eastwood's most pleasing character studies since Million Dollar Baby.

IndieWire by David Ehrlich

The latest of Eastwood’s many potential swan songs, this sketch of a movie is transparent enough to focus all of your attention on the shadow imagery behind it. On the brimmed silhouette that its director and star cuts in a door frame, on the six pounds of gravel that it sounds like he gargled before every take, and on the way that he plays Mike as a man who would give anything for a place to hang his hat if only he could bring himself to take it off his head. Better late than never.

The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney

This is a story so crusty and antiquated in its conveniently resolved conflicts, contrivances and drippy sentimentality that it should have been left on the shelf.

San Francisco Chronicle by G. Allen Johnson

But Eastwood is undercut by the unbearably weak screenplay by Nick Schenk, who adapts a 1975 novel by N. Richard Nash. Schenk has turned in good work for Eastwood before, including “Gran Torino” and “The Mule,” but here his strategy seems to be having his characters explain everything that they’re doing and feeling, much of which should be delivered visually. Action is character, after all.

The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

The fact is that, as a movie, Cry Macho is slow and sometimes dull. But as a statement by Hollywood’s oldest leading man and working director, it offers its share of gleaming low-key insights.

Paste Magazine by Jacob Oller

Eastwood’s been riding off into the sunset for decades now, and Cry Macho’s creaky, lackadaisical hat-wave is a feature-length parody of a golden oldie.

Variety by Owen Gleiberman

It’s friendly and diverting and formulaic, in an inoffensive and good-natured way, and it’s a totally minor affair.

TheWrap by Robert Abele

A road movie that, considering who made it, starts pretty far down that road, Cry Macho is familiar and loose, sometimes rattly, occasionally wince-inducing, and in a few moments genuine in ways no one else seems to know how to do anymore.

Screen Daily by Tim Grierson

From the film’s first moments, the audience can guess exactly how the story will pan out, and the pleasure is watching Eastwood gracefully negotiate every well-worn twist and turn.