In 1978, Mike Milo, a onetime rodeo star and washed-up horse breeder (Clint Eastwood) takes a job from an ex-boss (country singer Dwight Yoakam) to bring the man's young son (Eduardo Minett) home and away from his alcoholic mother (Fernanda Urrejola) who doesn't care much for the boy, other than as a bargaining chip with his father.
Eastwood's character is given the mother's address in Mexico City, and she gives him extremely good instructions on where the boy could be found - in an illegal cock fighting arena - but later she seems upset that he found him.
Crossing rural Mexico on their back way to Texas, the unlikely pair, who often clash, faces a challenging journey, during which the world-weary horseman teaches the boy what it means to be a good man.
Along the way, Eastwood's character finds an unlikely partner in a much younger woman, Marta (Natalia Travern) who runs the cafe in the kind of dusty village Clint Eastwood that always showed up in westerns of old. Marta is a widow who runs the cafe and cares for her three young granddaughters.
I enjoyed the movie on a certain level, but the plot was very slow, and so was 91-year-old Clint, who didn't walk, so much as shuffled, throughout the film, which at times was painful to watch.
His voice was quiet and rapsy, which made it hard to hear his lines sometimes. For his age, he did a serviceable job, but clearly it was a stunt double in that ring with a wild horse he tamed.
In retrospect, Eastwood, who produced, directed, and starred in the film, should have passed off the acting duties to a younger man in his 60s. I don't want to say he acted poorly in the film, but it wasn't up to his usual high standards.
The boy actor, Minett, has a great future in acting, and so does the rooster, who saved the day and steals the scene more than once!
Fernanda Urrejola, the rather deliciously evil mother here, is starring in the Netflix series Narcos, and acts in both Chile and Mexico.
I tentatively recommend the film, which is based on a 1975 novel of the same name by Richard Nash (who co-wrote the film's screenplay) because of the sweet story, but go into it knowing that something is lacking up on the screen.
