Writer-director Martin McDonagh’s fifth feature film, Wild Horse Nine, stars John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as CIA officers on a final mission to Easter Island. Premiering at the Venice Film Festival, the tragicomedy explores themes of atonement and American interventionism against the backdrop of the 1973 Chilean coup.
Martin McDonagh has built a career on the intersection of grisly violence and verbose, pugilistic dialogue. While his previous collaborations with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are well-documented, Wild Horse Nine marks a shift toward American leads, transplanting them to a foreign locale to better suit the director’s European sensibilities.
CIA Operations in 1973 Chile
The narrative begins in Chile months before the 1973 coup d’etat that saw the military overthrow socialist president Salvador Allende. The story centers on Chris, a veteran CIA agent played by John Malkovich, and his sidekick and former mentee, Lee, played by Sam Rockwell. Both operate under the supervision of MJ, the tetchy head of South American operations played by Steve Buscemi.
Chris is depicted as a man who has been involved in nearly every shady U.S. intelligence intervention of the 1950s and ’60s, including operations in Indonesia, the Congo, Guatemala, and the Bay of Pigs. This history informs the film’s political weight; Chris openly boasts about the CIA’s role in destabilizing Chilean democracy to a pair of left-leaning college students, Monica and Alicia, before departing for Easter Island.
While the trip to see the Moai statues is ostensibly recreational, the underlying tension is driven by Chris’s deteriorating health. He is battling inoperable cancer and cognitive decline, leading MJ to fear that Chris might publish a memoir that would compromise classified information.
The Dynamic Between Chris and Lee
The film relies heavily on the chemistry between Malkovich and Rockwell, whose relationship fluctuates between brotherly bickering and heartfelt tenderness. Rockwell brings a nuanced, “funny-sad” energy to Lee, a performance grounded in his previous experience with McDonagh’s spiky dialogue in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and Seven Psychopaths.
Malkovich’s Chris is presented as a complex figure—initially appearing as an obnoxious “ugly American” but gradually revealing a deeper, sympathetic tragedy. His character is defined by a lack of conscience that only begins to shift as he faces his own mortality. The tension between the two agents is amplified by Chris’s tendency to use sly obfuscation and sardonic humor, even when discussing the gravest matters.
A Subversive Indictment of American Intelligence
Unlike the abrasive social commentary found in Three Billboards, the critique of the U.S. government in Wild Horse Nine is described as a “slow poison.” The film frames the CIA’s actions during the 1960s and ’70s as betrayals that damaged both the world and the United States itself.
McDonagh utilizes Chris’s Catholicism to weave a spiritual layer into the narrative, blending “Catholic guilt” with dark comedy and bleak bitterness. This allows the film to function as an elegy, moving from the mysteries of the heart—a theme central to The Banshees of Inisherin—toward the mysteries of the soul.
The film also touches on the friction between seasoned operatives and modern sensibilities. In one sequence, Chris and Lee become hostile toward tourists who attempt to correct them on the use of Indigenous names for the island and its stone heads, specifically Rapa Nui and Moai.
Production Details and Release
The film has a runtime of 1 hour and 58 minutes and carries an R rating. In addition to the lead duo, the cast includes Parker Posey as Lee’s unscrupulous wife and Tom Waits. The production’s visual approach mirrors the juxtaposition of natural beauty and bleakness seen in McDonagh’s previous work in Ireland.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Release Date | Friday, Nov. 6 |
| Venue | Venice Film Festival (Competition) |
| Director/Writer | Martin McDonagh |
| Key Cast | John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi |
While the film is praised as McDonagh’s most emotional work to date, it leaves a lingering ambiguity regarding Chris’s past. Specifically, the narrative hints that his history may or may not have included the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a detail that remains an unresolved mystery as the characters face their shared past on Rapa Nui.