The Big Picture · Review · Discussion · Top Five
September 17, 2021/ 89 min/ Sean Fennessey · Adam Nayman · Chris Ryan
Sean Fennessey, Adam Nayman, and Chris Ryan spend an episode on all six decades of Clint Eastwood: 'Cry Macho,' the mythos around him, and a shared, unanimous No. 1.
24 films across 5 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
Review: Cry Macho
Eastwood, 91, directs and stars as a washed-up ranch hand sent into Mexico to retrieve his old boss's son (and a prize fighting rooster). The project sat unmade for over thirty years, with Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, Pierce Brosnan, and eventually Arnold Schwarzenegger all attached before Eastwood finally made it himself.
Sixty years, one personathe shape of a career
Eastwood's directing debut, released the same year as Dirty Harry, a DJ-stalker thriller the group calls a clear precursor to Fatal Attraction.
The Don Siegel film that made Eastwood's persona. Adam calls the “do you feel lucky” scene a performance built on total numbness, credited alongside Bullitt as a direct inspiration for the inspector Ruffalo plays in Zodiac.
Cited as a direct influence on Tarantino's screen violence, though Adam notes Tarantino only ever namechecks Leone, never Eastwood himself.
Adam's example of a film Eastwood directed that isn't “about” Clint Eastwood, unlike Gran Torino or The Mule.
Its companion piece: same distinction.
Another one Adam says isn't really “about” Clint Eastwood, despite being one of his biggest awards-season hits.
Where Adam draws the line: this one “kind of” is about Clint.
Definitely about Clint, per Adam, and a movie he says friends have “literally threatened his life” over him not loving enough.
The direct forerunner to Cry Macho the group keeps circling back to, including its own long stretches of just watching Clint drive.
Sean Fennessey's Fivefavorite Clint Eastwood movies
No. 1 - the unanimous pick across all three lists. Sean singles out the opening shot of Eastwood digging his wife's grave, and a David Webb Peoples screenplay that sat unproduced for a decade before Eastwood finally made it.
No. 2 - the Dirty Harry sequel Eastwood made as a direct answer to the original's police-brutality backlash, directed by the “fairly unheralded” Ted Post.
No. 3 - from the Man With No Name trilogy, which the group agrees hasn't aged a day, bad dubbing and all.
No. 4 - directed by Don Siegel; Eastwood has fewer than 100 lines in the whole movie and still anchors every frame.
No. 5 - the ghost-stranger revenge Western where a town gets painted red to draw out its killers. Paired here with its unofficial 1985 sequel, Pale Rider.
Adam Nayman's Fivefavorite Clint Eastwood movies
No. 1 - unanimous. The film Adam's been measuring every subsequent Eastwood “victory lap” against since the top of the episode.
No. 2 - an audible away from Dirty Harry, made by the same director (Don Siegel) the same year. Adam calls it Dirty Harry's mirror image: instead of all-powerful, Eastwood spends the whole movie humiliated. Sofia Coppola remade it in 2017.
No. 3 - “an extraordinary act of transubstantiation” out of a book Adam thinks is bad, built around the scene where Eastwood picks Meryl Streep a bouquet of poisonous flowers.
No. 4 - Kevin Costner as the escaped convict Eastwood's Texas Ranger chases down. Adam calls it a dry run for Cry Macho's mentor-and-kid template, and one of the best-made movies Eastwood has directed.
No. 5 - a deliberate provocation: a dramatization of a real train terror attack starring the actual men who stopped it, not actors. Adam calls it “the weirdest damn movie” and admits he's the only one of the three who'd watch it twice.
Chris Ryan's Fourfavorite Clint Eastwood movies
No. 1 - unanimous. Chris credits Gene Hackman's villain, who doesn't think of himself as one, and a beating that finally showed him what movie violence actually looks like, after years of his dad debunking barroom-brawl clichés.
No. 2 - Chris's favorite of the Leone trilogy, for Klaus Kinski above all.
No. 3 - Wolfgang Petersen's Secret Service thriller, which Chris calls the best acting of Eastwood's career, built on the phone scenes with John Malkovich and a gentler Rene Russo romance than the usual Eastwood age-gap dynamic.
No. 4 - Michael Cimino's bank-robbery caper with an Oscar-nominated Jeff Bridges, which Chris calls the closest Eastwood ever got to Malick.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Eastwood deep cuts Coogan's BluffEvery Which Way But LooseAny Which Way You CanBronco BillyThe Eiger SanctionPink CadillacThe EnforcerTightropeAbsolute PowerHereafterInvictusJersey BoysTrouble with the CurveThe ChangelingJ. EdgarAmerican SniperSullyRichard JewellA Fistful of DollarsThe RookiePale Rider
Not Eastwood, but in the conversation The Card CounterFatal AttractionCliffhangerZodiacBullittThe Silence of the LambsThe Quick and the DeadRio BravoE.T. the Extra-TerrestrialLincolnFree GuyHeaven's GateField of DreamsJFKThe Bodyguard
In passing Repo ManDeadpoolMajor League II
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV Rawhide
Games FIFA World Cup Launch Edition
Ads NetflixBoar's HeadWhite Claw