Writer-director Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine connected with me less on an emotional level than an intellectual one. Although ironically, one could say my major issue with it is more intellectual in nature. In any case, it’s still an incredibly solid film from one of the most assured and distinctive filmmakers working today.
McDonagh’s catalogue includes beloved dark comedies such as In Bruges and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Many of his movies feature two cantankerous gentleman — typically one older and one younger — waxing surprisingly poetically about life and how to live it while some kind of violent subplot is happening around them. Wild Horse Nine is no exception, and carrying much of the poeticism here is the great John Malkovich as Chris, an acidic veteran CIA officer looking back on his life with a mixture of regret and bemusement. His protégé Lee (Sam Rockwell) is slightly less acidic, but truly only slightly. When they take a week off from researching for the 1973 Chilean coup d’etat, their trip to Easter Island is marred by certain people and situations not being what they appear to be on the surface. In addition, a dark promise Lee made to Chris hangs over their entire “vacation.”
Malkovich is incredible here. His iconic voice fits the character almost too perfectly, and he modulates it to get the most out of any given moment. He also modulates Chris’ temper so brilliantly: his face contorts ever so slightly when Chris’ hackles are raised, and this lets us question a great number of things related to his age and his motives. McDonagh veteran Sam Rockwell makes Lee a great, albeit slightly pathetic foil to Chris’ scoundrel personality and short fuse. Over the course of the film, Lee realizes he simply can’t control Chris, and so he gradually stops trying. Everything that follows that decision is a beautiful act of friendship which further humanizes both characters, despite their heightened situation.
However, that humanization is not without its flaws, in my view. The film plays fast and loose with the truth of certain historical events (or at least the “official” story of said events), and while I never have an issue with that in principle, there’s one particular thing we learn about Chris’ role in a certain event which makes it very difficult to have overwhelming sympathy for him, even though he is truly going through quite a lot. I think the overall intention is for us to question both characters despite enjoying spending time with them, and that is done exceptionally well. It’s just that one particular question kept nagging at me, and often threatened to topple the tone of some otherwise very deft, genuinely emotional sequences.
Rest assured the film never goes into any kind of mushy territory or melodrama. As I said at the top, this is really more of an intellectual issue than anything else. For all of his main characters, McDonagh continues to prove that he is one of today’s most talented writers dealing in nuanced chamber pieces and/or character studies. There’s nothing quite unearned here, just more so unfinished in a slightly frustrating way. But my slight frustration should by no means keep you from seeing something this intelligent, entertaining, and well-acted. If Malkovich wins the Oscar for Best Actor (he currently seems to be the odds-on favorite), it will have been deserved and then some. | George Napper
Wild Horse Nine was the opening night film of the 2026 St. Louis International Film Festival, and is in theaters now. Further information about the Festival, which runs Nov. 5-15, is available on the festival website.
