Macho and Sainthood

Macho and Sainthood

Cry Macho

Perhaps in part because of the natural progress of his career and his life, Clint Eastwood seems to be following a kind of pattern in his recent works.  In Million Dollar Baby (2004) he played a grizzled prize fight manager/trainer who reluctantly agrees to help a young woman (Hillary Swank) succeed in a boxing career.  In Gran Torino (2008) he played a cranky retiree from the auto industry in Detroit who reacts badly to the Hmong family who move in next door, but ends up learning something about them and their culture and defending their teenaged boy from the bullying of a gang of dangerous thugs.  Now in Cry Macho he plays, yes, a beat-up old rodeo cowboy who journeys to Mexico to recover his boss’s son (Eduardo Minett) from his neglectful mother.  In the process, of course, he and the boy come to understand each other and create a relationship.

Rather like a geriatric version of the Bridges of Madison County, Eastwood also once again wanders into love, this time with a generous Mexican woman who owns a small restaurant.  The rest of the story unfolds in a reasonably predictable manner, with Eastwood and his companion journeying northward to the United States, encountering numerous difficulties and challenges, some of them violent, along the way.  The film proceeds in a familiar linear series of movements and events, ending pretty much as one would expect.  Slow, sentimental, repetitive, Cry Macho suggests that for all his films, achievements, and yes, years, Clint Eastwood still wants to make movies; it also suggests that, alas, his most interesting work may belong to the past.

 

The Many Saints of Newark

 

          The many saints of the title translate literally from the Italian Moltisanti family, familiar of course from The Sopranos, where Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli), Tony Soprano’s nephew, serves as a kind of surrogate son to the boss of the family.  Strangely, the film begins with a voiceover from the late Christopher, who now and then adds a bit of narrative to the action; he explains that he’s dead, killed by his Uncle Tony (followers of the series will recall that climactic event), and prepares the way for the rest of the movie.

          That rest of the movie proceeds rather like an extended version of a Sopranos episode, only set in a past that suggests something about the future that the viewers already know.  Focusing on the Moltisanti family, the film shows the infighting, jockeying for power, violence, and sexual habits that appear in the original series.  It also provides some history in its treatment of the Mob’s surrender of the numbers racket to the African American hoodlums of Newark, an event that also occurs accompanied by gunfire.   Some intra-family maneuvering and betrayals, plus a couple of shotgun blasts, help establish the personalities of the people who will become familiar in the television show, and also underline the particular viciousness of Anthony Soprano’s Uncle Junior (Corey Stoll).

          Beyond its retrospective look at the people, events, and forces that shaped the original characters, the film also shows the young versions of the adults who will later populate that familiar area in Northern New Jersey. Carmela (Lauren DiMario) appears as a sensible teenager trying to stop the antics of young Tony; John Mugero, the actor playing the young Silvio Dante, simply imitates the stiff posture and downturned mouth of Steve Van Zandt.  

Michael Gandolfini, son of the late James Gandolfini, of course provides the central gimmick of the film; the notion of the son of an actor playing the son of the character his father established should prove irresistible.  Although his school guidance counselor tells Tony’s mother Lydia (Vera Farmiga) that her son is highly intelligent, with good qualities of leadership, the movie shows him as a dumb lout, what used to be called a juvenile delinquent (do they use that term anymore?), a vandalizing punk.  As an actor, he may be adequate, but unlike his late father, beyond some scenes of overplaying, he possesses absolutely no presence on the screen.

Ultimately, the movie seems oddly less satisfying than, say, one of the better episodes in The Sopranos.  Showing the background of the people, their younger selves, must have struck the filmmakers as a great idea, but the reality fails to live up to that idea.  The linear plot, the labored attempts at characterization, and the flat performances of most of the actors all suggests that actually few saints exist in The Many Saints of Newark.