Since bursting onto the scene in 2008 with In Bruges, Martin McDonagh has become known for his dark humor and dialogue that feels natural while still retaining an absurdist edge. Now, with his fifth film, he brings those trademarks to a new locale. Wild Horse Nine is only the second feature film to shoot on Easter Island, following the 1994 film Rapa Nui, which takes its title from the Indigenous name for the island.
The film is set in Chile in 1973, featuring John Malkovich as Chris, a veteran CIA agent sent there by his handler, MJ, played with effervescent wit and the trademark snarl of Steve Buscemi. Accompanying him on this mission is Lee Chesterfield (Sam Rockwell), a fellow CIA operative and Chris’s protégé. At the beginning of the film, Chris talks to two college students at the airport, Monica and Alicia (Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas), essentially detailing the upcoming September coup that would overthrow President Salvador Allende. We of course wonder why a man who has been in the CIA this long would suddenly reveal all of this to two strangers.
We get our answer early in the film. Chris has terminal cancer and he is dying, using morphine to ease the pain while reckoning with the actions he’s taken throughout his life. The real reason for the trip gradually becomes clear. Chris wanted to come to Easter Island to die, and he has brought Lee along with the understanding that when Chris says the word “Arkansas,” Lee is supposed to shoot him. What initially resembles another mission involving two CIA operatives instead becomes something much more intimate: one man accompanying his mentor to the place where he has chosen to die.
Chris is easily John Malkovich’s best performance in almost two decades. Malkovich has been working constantly during that time, but it’s been a long time since a filmmaker gave him a role worthy of his acting talent, one that reminds us he can do far more than simply play the oddball. While Malkovich does imbue Chris with his share of oddities, there are many scenes where the comedy slows down and we are left watching a man truly come to grips with his life’s work. As he lists near the beginning of the film, that work includes involvement in a large number of coups and even a hand in the JFK assassination, allegedly. Malkovich finds the humanity in a man who knows exactly what he has done and that he is running out of time to reckon with it.
The last time Sam Rockwell collaborated with McDonagh was on 2017’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, where his performance as Officer Dixon earned him an Academy Award. Here, he’s finally given another role that merits his efforts and the ensuing acclaim thereafter as Lee Chesterfield. Rockwell imbues Lee with what I’d consider somewhat aggressive babysitter energy, constantly chasing after Chris and trying to keep a man who increasingly behaves like a manchild under control. Underneath the comedy is the knowledge that Lee understands where this trip is ultimately supposed to lead, even when Chris himself seems to forget.
If there is an area where Wild Horse Nine feels noticeably thin, it’s in its female characters. Monica and Alicia are amusing foils for Chris, who seems partly interested in them because he’s a dying man trying to get his kicks in while he still can, but neither is given the depth afforded to Chris or Lee. The same is true of Parker Posey as Lee’s wife, Marge, who has two hilarious conversations with Rockwell but little character beyond them. This is ultimately a film about the relationship between two men and the women surrounding them feel underwritten as a result.
McDonagh’s dialogue has its classic zingers, including an amusing monologue where Chris waxes lyrical about Western democracies having the best cheeses because they’re gay. He calls Lee the “Arch Pussy Ferdinand,” talks about a suitcase bomb with a picture of a dwarf holding a basketball, and declares Hank Williams Jr. his “favorite drug user.” The absurdity emphasizes the fugue state Chris is in. He’s so doped up on morphine that, when he begins recording his memoirs, he opens by pondering whether dinosaurs get into heaven (which he thinks is a hilarious curveball to start his life story with).
As stated earlier, Lee essentially serves as Chris’s external memory, reminding him of aspects of himself that he has forgotten. Chris has apparently already informed Lee that he is Catholic, (meaning, by his own figuring, there are no dinosaurs in heaven) and that he wanted to die on Easter Island. Or was it Venice? This uncertainty is mirrored in Chris’s own confusion.
That uncertainty extends to the image of a horse that repeatedly haunts Chris. We’re never entirely sure whether it is real or another hallucination, but he becomes fascinated by the wild horses of the island. Perhaps he sees in them something he has never really possessed himself: freedom. After a lifetime carrying out the orders of governments and handlers, Chris has arrived at one of the most remote places on Earth, only when he too is nearing the end of his life. Even the “Nine” of the title may be something as mundane as the number of his hotel room.
That remoteness makes Rapa Nui an inspired setting for Chris’s unraveling. At one point, he casually tells Monica and Alicia that the CIA has eyes on Chilean musician Victor Jara, another horrifying piece of information delivered with the same strange nonchalance as so many of his confessions. There is a broader political undercurrent here about the damage powerful countries inflict far beyond their own borders.
Rapa Nui carries a long history of colonial exploitation and annexation, while Chris has spent his career participating in America’s interference abroad. Given McDonagh’s Irish background, it’s difficult not to see at least some echoes of Britain’s relationship with Ireland in the film’s preoccupation with empire and its consequences.
McDonagh has always known how far he can push the absurdity before pulling it back and letting something painful take its place. He and Malkovich are completely on the same page here. Malkovich makes Chris ridiculous without reducing him to a joke, and when the jokes stop, we’re left with a dying man who has finally run out of ways to laugh at what he’s done.
That puts Wild Horse Nine alongside In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin among McDonagh’s finest films. Like both, it finds something deeply human amid all the cruelty and absurdity. Chris wondering whether dinosaurs go to heaven is very funny and yet the joke takes on a different meaning when you remember that he is only thinking about heaven because he knows he is going to die.
Watch the trailer right here.
All images via Searchlight Pictures.
Directed by Martin McDonagh
Screenplay by Martin McDonagh
Produced by Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, Martin McDonagh, Anita Overland
Starring John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits, Parker Posey, Mariana di Girolamo, Ailín Salas
Premiere Date: September 3, 2026 (Venice)
Running Time: 118 minutes
Other Writers Say…
Jaime Rebanal
Initially felt skeptical about Martin McDonagh moving away from his native Ireland to tell a story about the CIA and what they did after their part in the Chilean military coup. Yet, the kind of film that Martin McDonagh has made is one that feels very scathing, especially in how his sense of humour is punctuated by the deliveries of both John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. Both play exceptionally well against one another, but Wild Horse Nine pushes McDonagh’s own canvas into something bolder: especially given the political backdrop he’s working from. This movie doesn’t shy away from its portrait of the CIA and their exploits, but it’s also what makes everything Malkovich recounts about his time funnier. Yet, he’s also created something very moving out of that means to embrace mortality.
This might be the closest that Martin McDonagh has come to evoking the same feeling that he brought out of In Bruges. For a film about CIA agents wandering around, it feels appropriate, especially when he’s pinning down the violence that they’ve become complicit in on their vulnerabilities. Comparisons to the Coen brothers feel inevitable here, and they’re not unwarranted either. McDonagh’s writing remains unparalleled.
Nathan Sherwood
Martin McDonagh delivers another excellent film with Wild Horse Nine. What starts as a buddy comedy adventure slowly turns more into the philosophy of life and morals with McDonagh’s stylistic black humour. John Malkovich shines bright and is a film not to miss.
Connor Walsh
Becomes more of a greatest hits instead. Often it feels like Martin McDonagh sticks to his comfort zone and has no particular interest in moving outside of this. Yes the performances are great but the film lacks any attempt to differentiate from his previous work.
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