Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine reunites the Oscar-winning writer-director with a familiar formula: two morose men, one older, one younger, who spend their days trading barbed bromantic dialogue, quarrelling, and occasionally revealing something deeply wrong with their friendship. The film, which screened at the Venice film festival, brings McDonagh to a US setting with American characters and dialogue, a shift that, as in 2012's Seven Psychopaths, can bring out something less interesting in his work: more violence, more strenuous sweary machismo, less comedy, less charm.
A familiar setup with a new pairing
As with In Bruges from 2008, of which this latest film is almost a retread or B-side, two seasoned pro killers find themselves surreally marooned in a place that baffles them. Malkovich and Rockwell play Chris and Lee, a pair of sweaty CIA operatives stationed in Santiago, Chile, in 1973, preparing for a covert operation to kill the country's president Salvador Allende, a democratically elected socialist. They are at different stages of cynicism and disillusion, each with something of G Gordon Liddy about him – guys accustomed to off-the-record work for which Uncle Sam will never publicly reward them.
Just before the big moment, Chris heads off on a semi-sanctioned holiday to Easter Island, and Lee, in affectionate exasperation, must accompany him as minder and pal. Chris is very sick, with a serious self-administered morphine habit. To the fury of their hated boss MJ (Steve Buscemi), he is working on indiscreet memoirs and has a new habit of talking to complete strangers about his various wet jobs and black ops, including two young Chilean students played by Mariana Di Girolamo and Ailín Salas.
Drollery and dark truths
There is a fair amount of drollery in the Easter Island statues, which the pair derisively call the “heads”, though almost everywhere they go they are reproved by fellow tourists for not using the indigenous terms Rapa Nui for the island and Moai for the statues – though the review suspects this is a 2026 issue, not a 1973 one, for visitors. As for the unrepentant old bad boy Chris, he lets people know his utter derision for civil rights liberal movements along with his soft spot for the IRA against the British.
All the while, the awful truth about Chris begins to surface. To paraphrase Shakespeare, he has done the state some service but they can't know it. He is in fact one of the most important people in CIA history, and indeed American history.
Mixed verdict
There are laughs here and some lively moments, but persistent, slightly jarring violent flourishes inevitably coexist with sentimentality – although that sentimentality might not erase the audience's concern about a situation concerning Lee's wife and kids, whose wellbeing at the end seems to be heartlessly forgotten. Not a McDonagh classic, but some nice riffing from Rockwell and Malkovich.
