John Malkovich plays Chris, a veteran CIA operative, while Sam Rockwell takes on the part of Lee, his protégé, in Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine. The pair go to Easter Island for a getaway. The setup recalls McDonagh’s first feature, In Bruges, where two contract killers take refuge in a lovely vacation spot while a deadly shadow looms over them. Yet this time, the film goes beyond merely being a tale about killing. It becomes a puzzle centered around the people who have inhabited these roles before.
Chris and Lee on Easter Island
The film opens in Santiago, Chile, just before the 1973 coup d’etat. Chris and Lee have destabilized the newly democratically elected leader. Now they are headed to Easter Island to see “the big heads.” Chris is loud, obnoxious, and unapologetic. When tourists urge him to call the giant stone statues “moai,” the name the Indigenous people gave them, he scoffs. When two female college students express excitement about their women’s rights march, he tells them bluntly that their efforts will be for nothing because of a U.S. operation that will topple their president. His line is simple: “Your country is gonna get fucked.”
Chris is a caricature, yet he is no fool. He is thoroughly cynical because he knows far too much. His boss, played by Steve Buscemi, is prepared to silence him through whatever means prove necessary. This journey is almost certainly going to be Chris’s final one, and both Chris and Lee are fully aware of that fact. They pass their days with a half-hearted kind of sightseeing, with Chris dwelling upon his life and its regrets while the wild horses run free across the green fields. Even now he attempts to court one of the coeds who he offended in Act One.
Rockwell’s Career Echoes
Rockwell has already played a swaggering CIA operative with a penchant for gallows humor and insubordination in a previous film. He appeared as one in the George Clooney-directed Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. That is not the only echo. Rockwell has also starred in McDonagh’s Broadway play A Behanding in Spokane in 2010. And he has now made three films with McDonagh: Seven Psychopaths, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and Wild Horse Nine. The repetition is the point.
Malkovich fits a familiar mold. He has previously played a CIA employee, most notably in the Coen Brothers’ Burn After Reading, where he portrays one who hopes to turn his top-secret exploits into a memoir. Now he repeats that role in Wild Horse Nine. The film also calls to mind Of Mice and Men, in which Malkovich played Lennie in the 1992 film adaptation, directed by and co-starring Gary Sinise. That parallel startles, and Mashable’s review asks whether it was done on purpose or simply happened by chance.
What the Review Finds
After one viewing of Wild Horse Nine, the critic spots several links and asks whether further viewings would reveal more. The film’s glibly unfaithful wife is played by Will Buscemi’s furious CIA chief spark a memory of a far-off film where he was in a position of power but not to be trusted? Will Parker Posey, who plays Lee’, and she calls up an image of one of her fiery old parts. Maybe Tom Waits, snarling from the depths of Monument Valley, could bring back memories of an old Western that helps explain the American singer-songwriter’s short yet important appearance.
The reviewer concedes they may be overreaching. The rhythms of Wild Horse Nine felt so familiar, both in McDonagh’s work and in American dark comedy, that they were searching for other ways to get excited.
The Craft Behind the Comedy
Ben Davis’s cinematography is gorgeous, setting these rough conquerors against an untamed landscape that seems to mock their ordinary ambitions for control. Rockwell plays the part with a greasy suavity in McDonagh’s signature caustic and comic dialogue. Buscemi, Parker, and Waits all pop with crackling outrage. Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas bring a fresh-faced exuberance that serves as a terrific foil to Malkovich’s world-weariness.
This killer comes across as infuriatingly detached, and Malkovich plays him with wicked charm. The humor lands with precision, and Chris’s resignation never feels like a dull sullenness. Instead, it reads as an intoxicating levity, as if he can sense the fall approaching and finds himself far too pleased to spread his wings.
The Meaning of Looking Back
Repetition gives the film added depth. Certain echoes are very specific. The review finds that Rockwell has played a swaggering CIA operative with a penchant for gallows humor and insubordination in the George Clooney-directed Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Malkovich has also played a CIA employee before, notably in the Coen Brothers’ Burn After Reading, where he plays one who is looking to turn his top-secret exploits into a memoir.
The repeated structure is more than a trick. It conveys something about the strange quality of remembering the past.
The Review’s Verdict
The review holds back its praise, observing that the film succeeds as a comedy, with McDonagh’s fiercely dark sense of humor fully deployed. Yet it also points out that as a Martin McDonagh comedy, it comes across as somewhat repetitive. That repetition might be the whole point. The film asks the audience to spot the ghosts of earlier roles in its characters, and to grasp how history keeps repeating itself, often for better or mostly worse.
The closing remark carries a sense of promise. Though Chris accepts his own destiny, the picture implies that the here and now may hold value all the same.
Key Facts Box
- Title: Wild Horse Nine
- Director: Martin McDonagh
- Lead actors: John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell
- Supporting cast: Steve Buscemi, Parker Posey, Tom Waits, Mariana di Girolamo, Ailín Salas
- Setting: Easter Island, shortly before the 1973 Chilean coup d’etat
- Previous McDonagh films: In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Banshees of Inisherin
- Malkovich’s previous roles: CIA employee in Burn After Reading, Lennie in Of Mice and Men
- Rockwell’s previous roles: CIA operative in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, McDonagh’s play A Behanding in Spokane
This piece serves as a note that cinema rests upon its own history. Each film draws from what came before it, and Wild Horse Nine follows that pattern too. Viewers are asked to look beyond the tale being told on screen and consider instead the figures behind it, the ones delivering the lines. That repeated return to the same ground is not a mistake. It is precisely the reason for the piece’s existence.
Source material: “Wild Horse Nine review: Is John Malkovich at the center of a meta puzzle?,” Mashable.
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