Wild Horse Nine Brings Martin McDonagh Back to Wonky Bromance Territory
Martin McDonagh is back on an isolated island with two men struggling to communicate with each other in the enigmatic new movie Wild Horse Nine, RTE.ie reported. The Anglo-Irish auteur trades the tortured hitmen of In Bruges for two CIA operatives working to undermine Salvador Allende’s government in Chile in 1973, as the film arrived in cinemas on Wednesday, the 4th of November.
John Malkovich stars as Chris Carlisle, an eccentric and melancholic operative riddled with terminal cancer and Catholic guilt. Sam Rockwell plays his partner, Lee Chesterfield. The odd couple spends most of their time driving around in a battered old coupe, bickering and discussing the nature of dirty work carried out on behalf of the US government with the exacting efficiency of accountants. Chris seeks to salve his conscience after a lifetime of murder by writing tell-all memoirs, recording notes into a Dictaphone by night while listening to Hank Williams and worrying about the moths circling his hotel bedroom.
Steve Buscemi Plays an Irascible Bureau Chief
Back in the Chilean capital of Santiago, Steve Buscemi plays irascible bureau chief MJ, a man with all the charm of a talking liver spot who is slowly losing his mind out of fear that loose-cannon Chris will betray everyone. Surreal and absurd, the film features McDonagh riffing on recurrent themes of stunted morality, guilt, and redemption. Lee and Chris are dwarfed by Easter Island's famous statues, which bear silent witness to their moral quandaries alongside wild horses roaming the rugged terrain.
Malkovich recounts a wicked life of global chaos, featuring lines like, “You only have to taste American cheeses once to understand why we lost Vietnam.” Following his Oscar-nominated turn as an icy would-be presidential assassin in 1993’s In The Line of Fire, Malkovich has form in this arena, even expressing a fond regard for the IRA from his time working with them in Belfast.
A Companion Piece with Familiar Energy
When Chris and Lee encounter an English couple at dinner in their hotel, it recalls the famous American tourists scene in McDonagh’s 2007 debut feature, In Bruges. It is hard not to see Wild Horse Nine as a companion piece to that movie—a smart little thriller that also found two partners in crime at the mercy of a contemptuous boss with an ulterior motive. The project also carries something of the scattershot violence and nervy energy of Seven Psychopaths, alongside a droll Coen Brothers sensibility and a gnarled cameo by Tom Waits.
Cinematographer Ben Davis leaned into the period’s 1970s aesthetic, with certain shots designed to look as though they came from Lee’s Super 8 camera, complete with the edges of the stock in frame. Non-sequiturs stick out at awkward angles and plot tangents abound, proving that being led up the garden path has rarely been this much fun.
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