Former playwright Martin McDonagh has made his acerbic mark on the film industry, with dark comedies In Bruges, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and most recently, The Banshees of Inisherin. He’s got another film to add to that list. Wild Horse Nine is an unconventional buddy movie, this time following two CIA officers based in Chile who find themselves plonked into a unique situation in the 1970s.
Sam Rockwell plays Chris, the protégé of John Malkovich’s Lee, who’s staring down the end of his career and is far more loose-lipped about his shady past than the CIA would like him to be. Chris is tasked with accompanying Lee on a trip to Easter Island, where secrets rise to the surface, and it’s revealed to the viewer that the journey has a darker purpose than initially believed. The film is strongly tipped to receive awards recognition for McDonagh, Rockwell and, in particular, Malkovich, who looks set to add a third Oscar nomination to his successes, having received two before: family drama Places in the Heart (1984), which won Sally Field Best Actress, and In the Line of Fire (1993), the Clint Eastwood thriller in which Malkovich memorably played the film’s villain.
His work in Wild Horse Nine is his best in years – he plays essentially a cold-blooded killer who has committed heinous acts in the name of his country, and is now reckoning with his actions while staring his mortality in the face. If we met the character decades before, he’d be a villain, but McDonagh’s script plays with the nuances of this effectively; following Lee at this stage of his life, you can’t help but like him despite his past actions, which may or may not include assassinating JFK. Rockwell, who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Three Billboards, might have the less obviously showy role, but he refuses to be overshadowed by his co-star, balancing the character’s exasperation and emotion with expertise.
As is the case with previous McDonagh films, so confident is McDonagh in his flair for comedy writing that several jokes are overstretched, and scenes run for several minutes too long. The feeling cannot be escaped that if the film were shorter, McDonagh would have delivered an unmissable film. But the performances go a long way to papering over these cracks.
Watch The Independent’s first-look review of Wild Horse Nine below. Wild Horse Nine, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, will be released in cinemas on 4 November, following a UK premiere during the London Film Festival in October. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
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