Film Review: Martin McDonagh’s “Wild Horse Nine” Is a Darkly Funny Reckoning for Two CIA Spies

Martin McDonagh’s fifth feature plays like a spiritual mash-up of In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin: two mismatched men, a remote and beautiful island, and a steady stream of profane bickering that slowly gives way to something much sadder. Wild Horse Nine is a dark comedy about the meaning of a life, specifically a life spent doing terrible things for your country, and it follows two CIA agents on a getaway to Easter Island. From Searchlight Pictures, it should be a critical and awards darling, but it’s also one of McDonagh's most accessible films.

It’s 1973, and Chris (John Malkovich) has been with the CIA nearly as long as the CIA has existed. Near the end of his career, he’s stationed in Santiago, where the agency is laying the groundwork to overthrow Chile’s democratically elected government. Lee (Sam Rockwell) is his longtime partner, his protégé, and the buffer between Chris and their exasperated bureau chief, MJ (Steve Buscemi). MJ is not pleased to learn that Chris is dictating a memoir. With the end of the road in sight, the two men take a trip to Easter Island that will leave them both forever changed.

McDonagh opens with a grainy, archival-style interview of Chris breezily recounting his career. At the heart of the film, Chris and Lee needle each other on planes, in hotel rooms, and among the island’s moai. Chris’s memory is slipping, and he keeps notes to himself in his pocket, one of which reads “Don’t trust Lee.” He records his memoir on a rotating series of tape recorders, pondering if there will be dinosaurs in heaven. McDonagh blends the absurd and the existential better than anyone, and he’s in peak form here.

Darkly funny and quietly devastating, Wild Horse Nine rests on the chemistry between its leads. Malkovich has delivered plenty of career-defining roles, but Chris catches him at the top of his game, swinging between razor-sharp cynic and lackadaisical man-child, often within a single scene. Rockwell, back with McDonagh after Seven Psychopaths and his Oscar-winning turn in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, is the stressed-out glue holding everything together. Lee carries a secret about this trip that he isn’t sure Chris even remembers. Buscemi makes the most of his scenes as a boss who would rather not deal with any of this, and Parker Posey adds a sharp jolt of chaos as Lee’s wife, Marge.

Rounding out the core cast are Alicia (Mariana di Girolamo) and Monica (Ailín Salas), two students Chris and Lee meet at the airport and keep running into on the island. Chris asks how they like their new president, learns they met at a women’s lib march, and tells them to “Enjoy him while you can.” The line plays as both a joke and a threat. Chris takes a sincere interest in Alicia, and knowing what’s coming for her home in Santiago fills their scenes with quiet dread. That ties into one of the film’s central themes: a reckoning, as a man who has spent his life killing weighs his Catholic faith and whether heaven still has room for him.

Wild Horse Nine is also a visual tour de force. Cinematographer Ben Davis, McDonagh’s collaborator on Three Billboards and Banshees, gives every frame heavy grain and rich, filmic color. The result looks less like a modern period piece than an authentic, if meticulously restored, film from 1973. Lee brings a Super 8 camera on the trip, and the film periodically cuts to his footage as he captures memories, which gives it an intimate, home-movie texture.

Like the best McDonagh films, Wild Horse Nine reveals so much about its characters along the way that it almost demands a second viewing, and knowing its secrets will surely change how the early scenes play. There’s a mysticism to the wild horses roaming Easter Island, and Chris is drawn to them in a way he can’t quite explain. Just don’t expect the title to spell out its meaning. Like much of the film, it’s something to chew on long after the credits roll.

I give Wild Horse Nine 5 out of 5 stars.

Wild Horse Nine opens Friday, November 6th, exclusively in theaters.