Martin McDonagh returns to his favourite tropes with a dark, melancholy, powerful, witty and strikingly original assault on America’s dubious foreign policy.
Horseplay: John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell
Image courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Considering his standing, it is perhaps surprising that Wild Horse Nine is only Martin McDonagh’s fifth feature film. Even so, it is unmistakably his thing, packed as it is with great dialogue, dark humour, melancholy, Sam Rockwell, male camaraderie, sudden violence, dwarf references, visual elegance and a poetic sensibility. John Malkovich is not just a CIA hitman with 68 kills under his belt, but a CIA hitman fed up with the agency’s meddling in foreign affairs, a hitman who happens to be writing his memoirs while struggling with dementia and worrying about the mortality of the moths in his room. His ruminations on whether or not there are dinosaurs in Heaven is in stark contrast to the brutal practicality of his professional partner and only friend, Lee (Sam Rockwell). Lee has a wife, but he’s not too happy with her right now, after she slept with a clown – a literal clown – and imagines that unknown people have been in their house to tidy it.
The year is 1973 and Chris and Lee are stationed in Santiago, Chile, not long after Salvador Allende has become the first Marxist president to be democratically elected in a Latin American democracy. But Chris can see all that is about to come crashing down and is so mentally unhinged by his illness that he mouths off about the CIA’s involvement in an upcoming military coup to anybody who will listen, the prettier the better. Chris is beginning to feel guilty about his involvement in the Guatemalan coup d’etat, the Bay of Pigs and that thing in Dallas, and wants to spend his last few days on Easter Island to look at the big heads. When he’s not waxing lyrical about those gay countries that produce the best cheese, he’s actually an irascible fool and is constantly picking on Lee.
This is probably John Malkovich’s finest hour and it will be quite a shock if he isn’t nominated for an Oscar (at the very least) next year. The 72-year-old actor not only deftly manages his character’s mood swings, but brings a poetic sensibility to a man losing his mind. Chris tries to write a poem about a horse, but fails miserably, although the thoughts that come out of his mouth are pure poetry.
As his sidekick, Sam Rockwell is on more familiar ground, the pepper to Malkovich’s salt, while Steve Buscemi and Tom Waits fill out notable supporting spots, as do the stony-faced moai, silent observers of what is to come on this windswept backwater, not unlike the island in McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin. Nature and politics often play a part in McDonagh’s work – the former making a mockery of the latter as the players act out their parts, their exits and their entrances predetermined. Here, the mythic is represented by a wild horse – perhaps the ninth of a free-roaming herd? – that takes a liking to this strange, troubled outsider, and a bond ensues. But be warned: McDonagh is prone to placing his equine characters in harm’s way.
Cast: John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits, Parker Posey, Mariana di Girolamo, Ailín Salas, Paola Giannini, John Heffernan, Poppy O’Shaughnessy.
Dir Martin McDonagh, Pro Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, Martin McDonagh and Anita Overland, Screenplay Martin McDonagh, Ph Ben Davis, Pro Des Denis Schnegg, Ed Mikkel E. G. Nielsen, Music Carter Burwell, Costumes Eimer Ní Mhaoldomhnaigh, Sound Joakim Sundström.
Blueprint Pictures/Film4 Productions/TSG Entertainment-Searchlight Pictures/Walt Disney Studios.
116 mins. UK/USA/Chile. 2026. UK Rel: 4 November 2026. US Rel: 6 November 2026. Cert. 15.
