Wild Horse Nine
Wild Horse Nine sees Martin McDonagh back on familiar ground, but we're not complaining when the results are this sardonic, blackly funny and strangely heartfelt
The least charitable read of Martin McDonagh’s latest is that it's a retread of 2008’s In Bruges: two men, up to shady business, end up on a mission-within-a-mission disguised as a holiday with their anxious boss on the other end of the phone. Wild Horse Nine is certainly familiar ground for McDonagh, but it plays entirely to his strengths. The result is by turns bleak, sardonic, riotously funny, and strangely heartfelt.
It's Chile, 1973. Lee (Sam Rockwell) has two clandestine goals as he accompanies his ageing partner, Chris (John Malkovich), a CIA legend present at all the agency’s blackest operations since Guatemala, for a week of sightseeing on Easter Island. It soon becomes clear that achieving both – and therefore guaranteeing protection for him, Chris, their boss MJ (Steve Buscemi) back in Santiago, and Lee’s wife Marge (Parker Posey) back home – might be a fool’s errand. All the while, history – and Chris’s strange insistence on both antagonising and befriending two young Chilean women on their holiday – march inexorably forward.
Rockwell and Malkovich’s chemistry buoys the entire film, finding sympathy in the absurdity of their predicaments while firmly establishing their rancid aims. As they wind each other up, mundane conversations leave the quiet part unsaid but abundantly clear (McDonagh’s script, while occasionally sophomoric, never patronises the viewers). There are no grand revelations – history may still be decided by the men with the biggest guns and smallest morals – but the black humour, humanity and one delightful MacGuffin make this a buddy comedy to remember.
Released 4 Nov by Disney; certificate 15