That granite squint — and all its history — hangs heavily over Cry Macho, a movie of such complete elemental Clint-ness that it feels in some ways like a summation of his whole career, and a requiem for it too.

But the poignancy of watching him play the cowboy once more feels like its own exercise in a kind of collective connective remembering: a bygone vision of masculinity whose template he didn't just embody on screen for decades, but half-invented our idea of in the first place.

The second thing to know is that Macho is also the name of a chicken — specifically a prized rooster owned by the 12-year-old boy that Eastwood's Mike Milo, a washed-up Texas ranch hand and rodeo man, has been sent down to Mexico City to fetch.