‘Wild Horse Nine’ Reminds You That John Malkovich Is a National Treasure

You could say that Chris Carlisle (John Malkovich) is a big deal in certain circles. It’s not like his name was gracing headlines in The New York Times back in the day, or showing up in the Warren Commission Report. But among those in the intelligence community, the man was a dirty-tricks legend. Please allow him to introduce himself, this man of stealth and taste. He was there when Patrice Lumumba was saying his last goodbyes in the Congo, and shouted out “Who killed the Kennedys?” — although having been there when the shots, plural, were fired, his answer to that particular question would be way, way more specific than just “after all, it was you and me.”

This particular devil isn’t looking for sympathy, however. Carlisle has found himself in Chile circa August 1973 for one last gig, helping to set the stage for a coup that will turn the South American country into an authoritarian nightmare for nearly two decades. Now, all he wants is some peace of mind. As well as a final resting place: Carlisle is dying of cancer. So he’s asked his partner in C.I.A.-sponsored crime, Lee Chesterfield (Sam Rockwell), to come with him to Rapa Nui, commonly known as Easter Island. Before he shuffles off this mortal coil, Chris wants to see “the big heads.” Lee wants to grant his friend’s final wish.

There are just two things complicating the endeavor: The older man is losing his memory. And, ironically, he’s also decided to write his memoirs, detailing his long and fruitful career of destabilizing democracies and assassinating dignitaries — including a certain prominent public figure in a Dallas motorcade. That last part doesn’t sit well with the duo’s supervisor, an agency apparatchik named MJ (Steve Buscemi). MJ wants Lee to terminate his pal with extreme prejudice ASAP. Chris, meanwhile, wants Lee to quit complaining about everything and recognize that someone may be out to get them during this little getaway. “When did you die and become the Arch-Pussy Ferdinand?!” he screams.

An exotic locale, a prickly father-figure-and-son relationship, eloquently profane dialogue that trips gloriously off actors’ tongues — you’ve probably guessed that playwright turned filmmaker Martin McDonagh is the person spinning this yarn. Wild Horse Nine follows a similar template to the writer-director’s other screen work, specifically his feature debut, In Bruges, (2008) and his most recent offering, The Banshees of Inisherin (2022). This new film falls somewhere between those two in terms of full metal McDonagh-mania. It brims with a maturity and confidence that puts it a few notches above the tale of Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleason’s hit men slouching through Belgium; and isn’t quite the stone-cold masterpiece that the same duo’s bloody bromance break-up in West Ireland is. But McDonagh’s latest is a great reminder that if a successful formula ain’t broke, it doesn’t require fixing, or even light tweaking. In the right hands, there’s a hell of a lot that can be done with two men, some first-rate banter, and a historical flashpoint that eerily resonates with our current need for a reckoning about American adventures abroad.

Whether or not you preternaturally dig McDonagh’s penchant for gallows humor, envelope-pushing notions of propriety, and ocean-water-level saltiness will be a breaking point here, of course; his work isn’t without harsh critics or controversy. But this daffy mix of buddy comedy and conspiracy thriller benefits from his facility with dialogue that’s just south of screwball, as well as the mutual admiration society between McDonagh and actors. Rockwell, essentially a member of the director’s rep company — it’s technically their fourth collaboration, if you count treading the boards — seems to inherently get the rhythm of McDonagh’s bickering back-and-forths. Cast as the foul-mouthed voice of reason instead of the volatile guy for once, he still manages to feel like a wild card. “Live wire” is Rockwell’s comfort zone, and you can feel the crackle in his exchanges with Buscemi, once again wearing perpetual irritation like a velvet cape, and Parker Posey as Lee’s needling-is-my-love-language wife. Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas enter the picture as two Chilean students who cross Chris and Lee’s path, with Di Girolamo acting as both the audience’s aghast surrogate and the movie’s conscience.

But let’s not pretend this two-hander-with-benefits doesn’t offer one star a sturdier showcase than everyone else. Wild Horse Nine lives or dies by the Mutt & Jeff chemistry of its leads, both of whom keep the proceedings propped up in between plot points and temporary pacing lulls. But this is a John Malkovich for-the-win affair. And his interpretation of Chris — sometimes cantankerous, sometimes childlike, sometimes flaky and forgetful, forever suffused with a metastasizing sense of guilt over his past misdeeds — is what makes the film draw blood even in its sillier, more surreal moments. Not just because the longtime C.I.A. spook is facing down a dwindling future or losing his grip on the present. It’s more that the ghosts of dirty-tricks past aren’t done with him. You’re not sure if disease, an agency lackey’s bullet, or a toxic amount of remorse is the thing that will finally put him six feet under.

There are any number of exchanges or oddly poignant asides (see: Malkovich nuzzling with a horse, who “smells” his cancer) or silent expressions that the veteran actor forms in Wild Horse Nine that would make a greatest-hits reel. We’d cherry-pick Chris’ brief phone call with his estranged brother, played by Tom Waits (!). Trading barbs while Waits lounges around Monument Valley — because if you’re going to take the U.S. to task, why not lean into it and go whole-hog in John Ford country? — his sibling notes that once the powers that be took down the golden boy from Hyannis Port, the whole country went to shit. “The whole country was already shit,” Chris replies. “You just didn’t know it.” In journalistic terms, this is called burying the lede. In Malkovich’s weary reading, however, it feels someone trying to shoulder the 20th century’s legacy of geopolitical fuckitude while being crushed underneath its 20-ton bulk.

Wild Horse Nine is a funny movie, even when — especially when — McDonagh slows things down and just lets Rockwell and Malkovich cook in tandem. It’s also a rage-filled movie, in which all that ha-ha bang-bang banter is the only thing keeping the bile from rising in McDonagh’s throat. At its core, it’s another bromance fable, revolving around the familial love between two men that’s thicker than spilled blood, and the only real thing in a world of fake global-policing shenanigans. You can easily bask in the joy of watching the actors trade verbal rabbit punches. But peer just past the surface, and you’ll see a screed on the paranoid style of American politics, in which the filmmaker demands that memories of anti-democratic enablement are not permanently erased from the collective consciousness. Guilt and regret are killers. They’re also the only rational responses to a long history of violence.