It’s impossible not to see similarities between Martin McDonagh’s breakthrough dark comedy, In Bruges, and his latest bruising look at a complicated male friendship, Wild Horse Nine. Both films are about a pair of shady killers in an exotic land, taking in the sights, the people, and contemplating more death. Only in this case, the two men are undercover CIA agents who have killed and disrupted governments all around the world, an it is one of them who is staring death in the face.
Following In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Banshees of Inisherin, McDonagh is a can’t-miss prospect every awards season. While most of his films have dealt with the relationships between men of violence, Wild Horse Nine has a solemnity to it that the others lack. McDonagh has often embraced a certain amount of chaos, but this one is more reflective and personal, but no less hilarious, reminding of John Michael McDonagh’s (Martin’s brother) 2014 spiritual comedy, Calvary.
Beginning in 1973 Chile, Wild Horse Nine follows CIA operatives Chris Carlisle (John Malkovich) and Lee Chesterfield (Sam Rockwell), just months ahead of the coup that would overthrow Allende’s democratically elected government. The duo are sent to remote Easter Island, where Chris has long wanted to visit the “big head statues, the Maoi, for spiritual reasons all his own. In reality, both men are carrying secrets. They’ve really been sent there by their boss, MJ (Steve Buscemi), so that Lee can ferret out a secret that Chris has supposedly been keeping, connected to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Chris is busy putting together his memoirs, which will reveal the deepest, darkest secrets of his time operating from the shadows.
Chris is also dying of cancer, while dementia eats away at his mind. He wants to get everything down before it all goes away, and Lee is helping him do that. The two men bicker and argue constantly, but there’s obviously love there. Lee comes across like a son looking up to his ailing father, or a caretaker with his patient. The two have an agreement; one that Chris has a tough time remembering. He keeps notes as reminders; one says “Don’t Trust Lee”, the other, “Remember that you’re dying.”
Wild Horse Nine doesn’t have the spurts of action, or strange fairy tale quality that In Bruges had. It operates on a slightly lower register; much of the film is simply Chris and Lee having funny, disturbing conversations. Chris is a chatterbox who openly reveals to a pair of Chilean students, Monica (Mariana di Girolamo) and Alicia (Ailin Salas), that they are CIA sent to destabilize the government. Lee can’t keep covering it up every time Chris does this, and yet it keeps happening. Something has to be done about Chris, and Lee is the guy to do it, even if he doesn’t want to.
If Rockwell did nothing but make movies with McDonagh, he would be the greatest actor in the world. He’s always been great, but he is on another level when working with McDonagh, even when his characters have nothing to say. It’s Malkovich who gets most of the best lines, like a terrific rant connecting successful democracies with queerness and quality cheese. Rockwell’s disbelieving reactions are great, but even better are when these expressions fade. The closer Lee gets to the fateful moment with Chris that he’s been dreading, the more we see how much he loves his friend and the man who has been like a father figure.
If there’s a problem I struggled with, it’s that Wild Horse Nine feels so much like McDonagh’s earlier work. There are scenes that could’ve worked just as well written for In Bruges, and some characters, such as Buscemi’s MJ, who feel like they were plucked directly from it.
It’s been so long since Malkovich has been this good that I forgot he had this in him. Chris is unpredictable to say the least, with lunacy and lucidity constantly at odds. The way he casually remarks about ugly operations in Guatemala, Cuba, and other places where he’s destroyed democracy, makes him a tough character to love. But Chris is also someone with a brilliant mind who has acted in “the greater good” all of his life, and now he’s angry at seeing that mind slip away from him. So if he gets a little nasty sometimes, we can sort of understand it.
Tom Waits makes the most out of a small, but important role as Chris’s estranged brother, now living off the grid in a trailer park in Monument Valley. Even though she only has one extended cameo, Parker Posey gets some of the biggest laughs as Lee’s wife, who spends their entire phone conversation talking about her various affairs and pondering if his job is putting her in danger, which it just might be.
Easter Island and the moai statues make for a postcard-worthy backdrop, a monument to longevity and strength as these two Americans, symbols of turbulence and impermanence, grasp wildly for meaning. As the title Wild Horse Nine suggests, there’s a bit an Old Western flair to Chris and Lee, like two aging cowboys witnessing the end of their generation and the birth of the next. A surprisingly violent finale, set near a horse’s decaying carcass, helps hammer home this theme wonderfully. At this point, McDonagh can do no wrong, and Wild Horse Nine is sure to have him showered with even more accolades.
Wild Horse Nine will hit theaters on November 6th.
