Boasting McDonagh’s trademark verbal venom and Malkovich’s best performance in years, Wild Horse Nine is visually engrossing entertainment, as sombre and thoughtful as it is darkly humorous.
Through an auteur lens, existentialism may be the most prominent theme in Martin McDonagh’s work. From the thorny moralism of In Bruges to the tragicomedy of The Banshees of Inisherin, McDonagh has continually explored the complexities of human beings in turbulent situations with sharp wit and quiet pensiveness. In Wild Horse Nine, where one man reflects on his life while waiting for death, this topic feels especially overt.
The film’s setting makes the fragility of existence clear: 1973, just before the Chilean coup d’etat that overthrew an elected socialist president. The United States was infamous for destabilising South and Central American democracies during the Cold War, and the story follows two such CIA agents who are fully aware of the upcoming coup – the gruff, uncompromising Chris (John Malkovich) and his put-upon protege Lee (Sam Rockwell). They were in Santiago, but now the pair are flying to Easter Island to see the Moai, the head statues that populate the island.
At first, this merely seems like a commissioned holiday from their bureau chief, the uptight MJ (Steve Buscemi). However, Chris was diagnosed with cancer six months ago, and, with only days to live, this trip is his final wish. Addicted to the morphine easing his suffering, and hit by compunction after years of overthrowing democracies, Chris is acting blase, openly, and vulgarly, confessing to the upcoming coup to anyone who will listen, much to the chagrin of the exasperated Lee.
McDonagh’s signature, albeit crass, verbal humour is out in full force. Chris, already jaded, has nothing left to lose with his end approaching. Thus, he speaks his mind, however rude, scornful or offensive it is. His rancorous, sarcastic dialogue contrasts with Lee’s irked exhaustion; he’s equally foul-mouthed, but stressed where Chris no longer cares. The vicious, colourful dialogue creates plenty of laughter as the characters’ personalities are exaggerated and underscored by coarse conversations born from the idiosyncratic task of keeping a government overthrow on the down low. This includes bizarre but hilarious exchanges about Nazis getting to Heaven, and Lee’s wife having an affair with a clown.
This cleverly ties comedy, stakes, and the brash but infectiously likeable characterisations together in an airtight bow. However, like McDonagh’s best work, a soulful gloominess lurks beneath the uncouthness. When our time comes, we tend to look back with a mix of regret and gratitude. Regret is the only thing more abundant in this picture than the Moai. Chris is considering all the mistakes he has made, both personal and transnational. More crucially, he laments what he has left to do, but has no more time to do it. There’s no escape, and his sudden guilty conscience for helping destroy countless countries only compounds his internal anguish.
It’s a sobering conundrum, and Lee’s is no easier. His accompanying Chris is to keep his big mouth shut in the wake of the inevitable coup. But he’s also fulfilling a chilling promise to Chris that he’s not sure he can keep. Despite the churlish nature of their interactions, their affectionate mentor-trainee dynamic is palpable, with Rockwell capturing a subdued torment as Lee weighs his impossible options. During the trip, Chris forms an uneasy but genuine bond with a pair of rebellious left-wing students, Monica and Alicia (Mariana di Girolamo and Ailin Salas, respectively), a development that complicates matters further but deepens the thematic explorations of death, remorse, and freedom.
Ben Davis’s cinematography uses gorgeous wide landscape shots and quiet, handheld close-ups of the actors, all under a grainy filter that evokes memory and the period setting. Like with The Banshees of Inisherin, these visuals work in tandem to elevate the feeling of external and internal isolation, the geographical loneliness reflecting the characters’ struggles, as the shots of wild roaming horses, one of whom Chris takes a liking to, emphasise the vitality of freedom. The very island itself becomes a character through McDonagh’s wistful direction. Easter Island was chosen as it is far off the mainland – a remote, tranquil place for Chris to die. Yet the myriad stone faces act as silent witnesses, frozen in time forever, as the life clock of one of these men gradually stops.
Anchoring this funny, poignant mix of gallows humour and sombre rumination is astounding work from John Malkovich. Whether it’s reckless, indifferent self-sabotage or melancholic pondering, Malkovich is as unfiltered in his nuttiness as he is devastating in rueful wallowing. In another’s hands, the character could’ve easily been a shrill, morose curmudgeon. Malkovich’s performance brings Chris’s grave depth to the surface, utterly endearing us to a covert killer who knows, tragically, that it’s too late for redemption. It’ll be surprising if this doesn’t earn Malkovich his first Best Actor Oscar nomination.
In its rush to deliver a nail-biting third act, the film becomes a touch overstuffed. Among the colliding secrets is Chris supposedly being tied to the JFK assassination, a peculiar addition to the narrative that’s unwarranted but ends up driving an unusual amount of the crisis point. Chris and Lee’s wrestling dilemmas, set against MJ’s paranoid demands, were more than enough to sustain the picture, so developments like this feel like unnecessary baggage that muddies the storytelling. That the film still manages to land with a final sequence that’s simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking is nonetheless proof that even cracks can’t break the armour of this picture’s tone and convictions.
Boasting McDonagh’s trademark verbal venom and Malkovich’s best performance in years, Wild Horse Nine is visually engrossing entertainment as sombre and thoughtful as it is darkly humorous. It’s an age-old lesson that bleak comedy is sometimes the best approach to weighty topics, whether political interference or the finality of death. McDonagh’s magnificent work continues to prove the fruitfulness of this sentiment.
Wild Horse Nine arrives in cinemas nationwide on November 6 with previews from November 4.
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