‘Wild Horse Nine’ Review: Two Spies, One Island, and a Goodbye Nobody Planned

Martin McDonagh has a type, and that type is two grumpy men stuck somewhere beautiful with nothing to do but wound each other with words. ‘Wild Horse Nine’ sends John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell to Easter Island in 1973 as a pair of CIA agents on what is supposedly a vacation. Chile is months away from a military coup, and these two know exactly what is coming because they helped set it up.

Malkovich plays Chris, an aging operative with terminal cancer, a wandering mind, and a habit of blurting out secrets in public. Rockwell is Lee, his longtime colleague, who gets quietly told by their boss MJ, played by Steve Buscemi, to find out what Chris plans to put in his memoir, especially anything about the Kennedy assassination. Chris only wants to see the giant stone heads and maybe admire a few wild horses before he goes.

Here is where the film won me over, and it has little to do with the plot. The spy machinery ticks along in the background while the real story is two men who cannot say a tender thing to each other without wrapping it in an insult. McDonagh’s dialogue is still a pleasure to hear, vicious and silly in equal measure, and the movie is at its best when it simply lets these two talk.

Malkovich is the reason to buy a ticket. He plays Chris as a man who is already half gone, rambling about dinosaurs in one breath and landing a line of genuine regret in the next, and he never once begs for your sympathy. Rockwell is the exasperated straight man, and his timing with McDonagh’s rhythms is as sharp as ever. The scenes between Chris and a young Chilean student, played by Mariana di Girolamo, give him a shot at something close to decency, and they became the emotional centre of the film for me.

It is not flawless. If you have seen ‘In Bruges’ or ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’, you will recognise the shape of this one almost immediately, and some of the jokes arrive in the same pattern scene after scene. The women get a raw deal as well, with Parker Posey as Lee’s wife and the two Chilean students handed far less to do than the material suggests they could manage. The script also points at American meddling abroad without ever sounding truly angry about it, so the politics feel closer to set dressing than argument.

Still, there is plenty to admire in how the whole thing looks and plays. Cinematographer Ben Davis makes Rapa Nui glow, and the island gives the jokes and the sorrow a wide open space to breathe in. Tom Waits and Buscemi pop up in smaller parts that add flavour, even if neither gets room to do much more than visit.

By the end, I was more moved than I expected, and I had laughed plenty on the way there. This is a comfortable, funny, and surprisingly tender goodbye that happens to be held together by one magnificent lead performance. Familiar as the formula is, it still works on me, and I give ‘Wild Horse Nine’ 8 out of 10.

Does ‘Wild Horse Nine’ deserve a spot among McDonagh’s best, or did the familiar formula wear thin for you, so tell me in the comments whether you agree with my verdict?