Wild Horse Nine Review

Wild Horse Nine is Martin McDonagh’s fifth feature film. This time he makes a historical spy comedy with two American acting legends.

Chris Carlisle (John Malkovich) and Lee Chesterfield (Sam Rockwell) are CIA agents stationed in Santiago, Chile, in 1973. As the Americans orchestrate a coup against the Marxist president of Chile, Chris and Lee travel to Easter Island, where they see the moai, and Chris plans to write his memoir. Their boss, MJ (Steve Buscemi), sees Chris as a liability and wants Lee to know if Chris has revealed anything about events that took place in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

McDonagh has built a reputation as a master of dark comedies and a great screenwriter. He has earned three Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay. His previous two films, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Banshees of Inisherin, earned numerous awards and nominations. Wild Horse Nine sees McDonagh make a more mainstream film that was closer to his debut film, In Bruges.

Wild Horse Nine had a similar setup to In Bruges, where two men go to a picturesque island in a form of exile, offend a lot of people on their travels, and one character suffers from Catholic guilt because of their sins. The similarities go deeper because of the un-PC characters saying offensive things that were darkly funny, the main pair getting bored during their stay, and the angry boss who is forced to travel because he has to finish the job. There were some differences because it was a period film where the CIA’s operations in Chile played an important role, and their dynamic between the main characters was reserved. The older character was the wildcard, and the younger man was the sensible one.

Wild Horse Nine’s marketing has leaned heavily on the comedy. The trailers showed the scene at the airport where Chris blabs about the CIA’s plans to topple the Chilean government. The first half of the film was the more comedic, as there were fast-paced exchanges about how to get someone to open a bomb, and how a country’s gayness correlates with the quality of their cheese. These discussions had a Tarantino quality to them. McDonagh followed Edgar Wright’s example when he made Hot Fuzz, where there was comedic foreshadowing which was used for a hilarious payoff.

Chris was made out to be an eccentric because of his behaviour. He acted like the worst spy ever as he revealed state secrets, had a memory like Swiss cheese, and took morphine. It’s not the first time that Malkovich played a mad spy, since he was in Burn After Reading and the RED movies. Yet there was more to Chris than just being a zany man who should have retired years ago. He was dying of cancer, which made him reflective and look back on all his actions and the assassinations he had been involved in. Due to Chris’ failing memory, he left himself notes like Leonard Shelby in Memento, which added to a sense of distrust for the old man. Malkovich had a great deal to work with, and considering McDonagh’s track record of getting actors Oscar wins, the 72-year-old Illinoian has a good chance of earning a third Academy Award nomination.

The heart of the film was the relationship between Chris and Lee. Despite their buddy-comedy dynamic and Lee’s frustration with Chris’ behaviour, he did care for his companion. Lee wanted to make Chris’ final days as pleasant as possible and make sure he went out with some dignity. Lee did everything he could to protect Chris from MJ’s wrath. There was also emotion as Chris reflected on his actions, and he ended up taking a liking to Monica (Mariana di Girolamo), a left-wing student visiting Easter Island. Chris tried to warn her what was coming even though Monica thought he was an arsehole.

There were some remnants of The Banshees of Inisherin in Wild Horse Nine. Both films had an island setting during a politically volatile time. The Banshees of Inisherin took place during the Irish Civil War, but the characters were safe from the conflict. Easter Island was far away from Santiago, but the plot still hit home because Chris revealed Augusto Pinochet’s post-coup plans. The Americans weren’t just backing a coup to gain a sympathetic government; they were actively going to support his upcoming crime of internment and mass killing. It was chilling.

Wild Horse Nine combined the caper nature of McDonagh’s early films with the sombre aspects of his more recent efforts, resulting in something humorous and poignant.