As a comedy, Wild Horse Nine works fine. British-Irish playwright-turned-filmmaker Martin McDonagh imbues it with the blisteringly macabre sense of humor that he's forged in work like his 2003 play The Pillowman and his feature film debut In Bruges, as well as later movies like Seven Psychopaths; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; and The Banshees of Inisherin. As a Martin McDonagh comedy, it feels a bit redundant. But perhaps that's precisely the point?
From its premise, Wild Horse Nine echoes the plot of McDonagh's first feature film, In Bruges. Both films center on a pair of contract killers who have an uneasy friendship, and who travel to a lovely vacation spot with a potentially deadly outcome looming over them. This time, McDonagh has cast John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell in the roles of CIA agents who are chaotically compelling and lethally reckless.
Within these roles, Malkovich and Rockwell are invited to repeat themselves, creating echoes that actually bolsters the film's message about the mind-bending nature of looking back.
Wild Horse Nine is an oddball's elegy.
Set shortly before 1973 Chilean coup d'etat, Wild Horse Nine begins in Santiago, where veteran operative Chris (Malkovich) and his protege Lee (Rockwell) have put things in motion to destabilize the newly democratically elected leader. Now it's time to kill some time with a getaway to Easter Island, because Chris wants to see "the big heads."
Loud and obnoxious, Chris is unapologetically an Ugly American. When tourists urge him to call Easter Island's giant stone statues "moai," the name the Indigenous people gave them, he scoffs. When two female college students express excitement over their women's rights march, he breezily reveals that all their efforts will be for naught because of a U.S. operation that will topple their beloved president. ("Your country is gonna get fucked.")
Chris' brazen insensitivity mirrors the racist cop Rockwell played in Three Billboards, with one exception. While both are caricatures making a mockery of Americans' lesser attributes, Chris is no fool. He is deeply cynical because he knows too much — so much, in fact, that his chief (Steve Buscemi) is ready to shut him up by any means necessary.
This trip will likely be his last, and both Chris and Lee know it. So within their half-hearted attempts at tourism, Chris reflects on his life and regrets, while seeking some fresh adventure. He becomes beguiled by the wild horses that roam freely across this lush, green landscape. And he attempts to flirt with one of the coeds he outraged in Act One. Within his meanderings and mumblings about many, many murders, there's not sadness, but a shrugging resignation that Malkovich sculpts into a darkly funny portrayal.
Wild Horse Nine is deepened by its repetition.
Rockwell and Malkovich have been in so many movies, there are bound to be bits of repetition eventually, right? But some of the echoes in Wild Horse Nine are very specific. Like, yes, this is the third film Rockwell has made with McDonagh, following Seven Psychopaths and Three Billboards. (He also starred in McDonagh's Broadway play A Behanding in Spokane in 2010). But more specifically, Rockwell has previously played a CIA operative with a lot of swagger and a penchant for gallows humor and insubordination in the George Clooney-directed Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.
Beyond that, Malkovich has not just played a CIA employee before, but in both Wild Horse Nine and the Coen Bros' Burn After Reading, he plays one who is looking to turn his top-secret exploits into a memoir. Then, most joltingly perhaps, as Wild Horse Nine goes on, cinephiles watching Lee try to protect Chris from a world growing increasingly hostile towards him might be reminded of Of Mice and Men. Notably, Malkovich played Lennie in the 1992 film adaptation, directed by and co-starring Gary Sinise. And yes, that feels relevant too.
These are the connections I noticed watching Wild Horse Nine just once. I wonder what other ties might be noticed on a rewatch? Will Buscemi's furious CIA chief spark a memory of a far-off film where he was in a position of power but not to be trusted? Will Parker Posey, who plays Lee's glibly unfaithful wife, invoke an allusion to one of her fiery past roles? Perhaps Tom Waits, snarling from the depths of Monument Valley, will unlock a recollection about a long-forgotten Western that serves to bolster the meaning of the American singer/songwriter's brief but meaningful scene.
Or maybe I'm reaching. Maybe the rhythms of Wild Horse Nine felt so familiar, both in McDonagh's work and in American dark comedy, that I was looking for other ways to excite myself.
I hope not. After all, Wild Horse Nine has a lot going for it. The cinematography from Ben Davis is gorgeous, putting these gruff conquerers in an untamed surrounding that seems to mock their mundane ambitions for control.
Rockwell is greasy and suave in McDonagh's signature caustic and comical dialogue. Buscemi, Parker, and Waits all pop with crackling outrage. Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas bring a fresh-faced exuberance that proves a terrific foil to Malkovich's world-weariness. And as for Malkovich, he's wickedly compelling as this infuriatingly blasé killer. The bounce he brings the comedy is expertly executed. Chris' resignation is not expressed through a dull sullenness, but an intoxicating levity. It's as if he can feel the fall coming and is all too happy to lift his wings.
And in that, Chris looks back on his life, and Wild Horse Nine urges us to look back on the filmographies of its makers (intentionally or not). In that, we, like this film's anti-hero, are urged to understand how history can keep repeating, for better or mostly worse. But hey, there might still be something worthwhile in the present moment anyway.
Wild Horse Nine was reviewed out of the Toronto International Film Festival. The movie will open in theaters on Nov. 6.
