What you say can be dangerous.
Writer/Director Martin McDonagh is a particularly gifted storyteller whose language is something to behold. One can often feel that it is written by someone brilliant, perhaps, and not merely contemporaneously spoken by the characters. But it’s so funny, or profound, or poetic, that you prefer McDonagh’s style to whatever might have sounded more realistic. A McDonagh screenplay is a treat for the ears, and that the language sometimes feels too perfect is counterbalanced by the glorious performances his actors embody, which ground his films in a profound authenticity. McDonagh’s pen, one might even say, is dangerous. Even if the prose is elegant at times, one never knows what a character will say or do next. It is wholly refreshing in a cinematic era of IP inevitability, to be genuinely brought on a journey by a storyteller unbound by the rules other filmmakers seem beholden to.
Specifically, here in Wild Horse Nine, we’re on a trip with Chris (John Malcovich in a career rebounding performance of a lifetime), an aging CIA operative whose lips are getting loose at the same time he’s struggling with memory loss. Best friend and fellow operative Lee (Sam Rockwell also delivering greatness), takes Chris to Easter Island in 1973 Chile. The Easter Island trip means different things to different characters. But none of the outcomes look particularly good for Chris (or Chile). Chris and Lee’s handler at the CIA, MJ (an always great Steve Buscemi), is spying on Chris through Lee and any other means possible, with a goal of punching Chris’ ticket. Chris just wants to know he still has one true friend he can trust in this world in Lee. Lee isn’t sure what he’s going to do, but his dysfunctional life and his loose lipped friend sure aren’t making his path any clearer.
As hilarious as it is profound, in Wild Horse Nine McDonagh crafts a story quite similar to his earlier masterwork In Bruges, in which a couple of hitmen lay low after a job in the town of Bruges, working through their friendship amidst violent circumstances. Mixing hilarity with profundity is McDonagh’s wheelhouse, in other words, and Wild Horse Nine had our audience cackling as often as it kept us on our toes, never knowing what Chris was going to do next, or what naked truth was going to be exposed around the bend.
Chris is a remarkably rich and nuanced character for McDonagh to pen and for Malkovich to embody. I thought perhaps at first Chris (and Malkovich) weren’t going to work for me. The performance is big, the dialogue is confident, the monologues are frequent. But as events play out, both McDonagh and Malkovich make the case for Chris’ flamboyance and back up all the bloviating with rich character. As an accomplished operative, he’s been dispatched all around the world to assassinate various heads of state that the CIA didn’t like, or destabilize regimes the USA wanted to see disappeared. He has secrets that can’t get out. But he’s also dying. And is there anything more dangerous than a man with secrets who is gaining clarity in impending death?
McDonagh’s film is biting; casually asserting that of course the United States was actively involved in acts of regime change, assassinations, and any and all clandestine shit you can imagine. In Wild Horse Nine it isn’t a matter of whether the USA are the bad guys, it’s simply a matter of whether or not Chris and Lee can find any kind of redemption amidst the moral morass. It’s a fantastic experience as a viewer, and sets up Wild Horse Nine as one of 2026’s very best films, to watch a dangerous and unpredictable character like Chris play out in a story from a fearless writer/director like McDonagh. It’s good for cinema to feel dangerous again.
“Cahoots, motherfucker!”
And I’m Out.
