Martin McDonagh returns to familiar themes and formulas in his latest film, Wild Horse Nine, featuring a tour-de-force performance by John Malkovich as a man facing his mortality.
Filmmaker McDonagh is no stranger to TIFF, with all his films save for In Bruges playing or premiering at the festival. His effort Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri won the coveted People’s Choice Award in 2017. With his latest film, the Irish director gives us another excellent ode to male friendship with deep-rooted, gallows humour. Think odd-couple pairings like Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin. But this time, McDonagh centres his story on a pair of CIA agents amid the political upheaval in Chile circa 1973.
In Wild Horse Nine, Chris (Malkovich) is a veteran CIA agent who has led decades of successful international campaigns with outcomes that benefited U.S. elites more than the citizens of any other nation. Having learned of a terminal diagnosis, he embarks on a trip to Easter Island, aka Rapa Nui, with his partner Lee (Sam Rockwell), for a break ahead of the planned Chilean coup. But despite the setup, the film cares less about politics than character study.
Cynical and forgetful Chris has been at this game for a long time — perhaps too long. Now facing the end of his life and career, he regrets some of his past actions and how he’s spent his time on earth. Rife with Catholic guilt, he devotes thought to things like whether Nazis, moths, or dinosaurs can find a place in Heaven. It’s weird, but it works, making Chris more endearing than dangerous.
McDonagh has a gift when it comes to dialogue, and he gives Malkovich ruminations on everything from Easter Island’s giant heads (or moai, as he’s informed) to whether his good intentions in rescuing moths are enough to cancel out his darker career deeds. The CIA, it seems, would prefer most of those deeds remain hidden. Determined to record his memoir detailing everything from missions in Guatemala to the JFK assassination, Chris’s boss MJ (Steve Buscemi) commands Lee to put an end to the veteran before he rambles on in front of the wrong people. But it’s too late. Easter Island is Chilean territory and Chris has said a little too much to two female students about the imminent CIA-orchestrated coup in Santiago to bring down the democratically elected Marxist leader Salvador Allende.
It may feel like a plot point borrowed from the great In Bruges, in which one partner is tasked with killing the other, but the treatment is different here. Instead of a wisened old timer told to take out the young upstart, it’s the junior man who must end his mentor. It’s a tough request to achieve in a well-established partnership built on trust. Chris and Lee bicker like an old married couple, well used to each other’s quirks and foibles. But beneath their barbs and jokes there is a real tenderness and a true friendship.
Malkovich has the weightier role here, and it is his best work in years, if not decades. Rockwell, an Oscar winner for McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is superb as Lee. The chemistry he and Malkovich have on screen is dynamite, with cuts to his exasperated reactions eliciting laughs, even amid the most serious contemplations of life and duty. True to his oeuvre, there are jokes a-plenty here. Both leads, along with Buscemi and cameo appearances by Parker Posey and Tom Waits, add macabre humour. While highly entertaining, it perhaps doesn’t reach the same level of comedy as the filmmaker’s Seven Psychopaths, and aligns with (and owes more to) Banshees and Three Billboards.
The film’s Rapa Nui setting is spectacular. Reminiscent of the remote setting in Banshees, McDonagh once again uses the isolated location as a reflection of male loneliness. The titular wild horses abound here, feeding into the film’s alt-Western vibes in both cinematography and plot. Here, Chris is an old cowboy, ready to be sent out to pasture, a six-shooter preparing to ride off into the sunset one final time.
In my opinion, McDonagh has never made a bad film, and while Wild Horse Nine may not be his best, it is still very, very good. Familiar though it may be, it still has plenty of wit and genuine affection between its two leads, so it feels like it’s treading new ground, too.
