‘Wild Horse Nine’ TIFF review: John Malkovich will break your heart in Martin McDonagh’s latest
Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures/TIFF
Crackling dialogue, wounded relationships, sudden violence and old guys sitting around shooting the shit are among the hallmarks of Martin McDonagh’s best films. His latest, “Wild Horse Nine,” comes fully stocked with all of them, assembling the writer-director’s favorite fixations into another darkly comic examination of guilt, friendship and the possibility of redemption. Though far from McDonagh’s best effort, it works as a kind of greatest-hits album that places familiar themes against a much larger political backdrop. The clearest comparison is “In Bruges,” of which this is practically an inversion: two killers are sent to an unfamiliar corner of the world, one of them has become a liability, and their friendship is tested by an order someone doesn’t want to confront.
It certainly helps to have an ensemble this good in your corner. John Malkovich is quietly devastating as Chris, an aging CIA operative dying of cancer who asks his longtime partner Lee, played by Sam Rockwell, to accompany him to Easter Island as a final send-off after an illustrious, morally bankrupt career. Malkovich has always been capable of turning the slightest inflection into something menacing or funny, but “Wild Horse Nine” gives him the opportunity to expose the sadness beneath that familiar eccentricity. Chris can be hilarious, irritating and frightening within the same conversation, yet Malkovich gradually reveals a man attempting to take stock of his life without fully admitting what that life has cost other people.
The year is 1973, and Chris and Lee are stationed in Santiago as Chile moves toward the military coup that will overthrow Salvador Allende, the country’s democratically elected socialist president. Their job is essentially to help destabilize the government while maintaining enough bureaucratic distance to preserve American deniability. McDonagh uses that arrangement to ridicule the language institutions employ to sanitize their worst behavior. These men have interfered in elections, participated in assassinations and left instability behind them across the globe, but everything becomes another assignment once it passes through the appropriate channels.
That expands McDonagh’s usual moral framework from personal violence to institutional violence. His characters have always been haunted by the terrible things they have done, whether they admit it or not, but Chris and Lee committed their sins under the protection of the American government. They were useful because they could kill without asking questions, and now that Chris is dying, the institution that employed him views his conscience as a security problem. His country will never adequately repay him for his service, although the film also understands that his victims paid a far greater price.
Chris has become fond of injecting morphine whenever Lee is not looking. He is also working on a memoir, much to the alarm of their twitchy superior MJ, played by Steve Buscemi, and has developed a habit of casually divulging classified information to complete strangers. Previous operations, top-secret intelligence and the impending overthrow of the Chilean government become conversational material for a dying man who no longer sees much reason to protect the machinery that consumed his life. Whether Chris is experiencing a genuine moral awakening or merely enjoying his final opportunity to create chaos is one of the film’s more interesting questions.
Their trip to Easter Island is ostensibly meant to fulfill Chris’ dying wish, though Lee is also there to keep him under control. Once they arrive, the two are content to wander around the island looking at the famous “heads,” a description the locals and tourists continually correct. There is real poignancy in these early interactions, particularly as Chris stares down the barrel of his own mortality and attempts to pass whatever wisdom he has left to Lee. Rockwell is working in a more restrained register than usual, allowing Malkovich to command the screen while quietly revealing Lee’s growing discomfort with the institution that has looked after them for decades.
McDonagh eventually complicates their retreat through Chris’ friendship with two politically engaged Chilean students, placing him in direct contact with the very liberal and progressive ideals he routinely dismisses. Chris makes no secret of his contempt for their politics, yet something about their conviction and youthful optimism begins to penetrate his hardened worldview. Their presence forces him to confront the human consequences of the American interference he has spent his career carrying out, even if he remains too stubborn and ideologically entrenched to articulate anything resembling remorse. That tension gives the relationship its poignancy: Chris may not respect what these women believe, but he gradually recognizes the courage required to believe in anything after spending his own life serving an institution built on secrecy, violence and moral compromise.
This is all firmly within McDonagh’s wheelhouse, perhaps a little too firmly. “Wild Horse Nine” revisits the strained male companionship of “In Bruges,” the stubbornness and severed relationships of “The Banshees of Inisherin,” and the more chaotic American violence of “Seven Psychopaths,” yet it does not always discover a fresh way of combining them. The film can feel like McDonagh consciously playing the old songs again, complete with circular arguments, delayed punchlines, Catholic guilt, and damaged men who would rather debate semantics than acknowledge that they love one another.
Some of the supporting elements also feel underdeveloped. Buscemi is always a welcome source of anxious, combustible energy, but MJ occasionally seems to be on a completely different wavelength. Parker Posey encounters a similar problem as Lee’s estranged wife, Marge, whose appearances add another layer of regret without receiving enough attention to become emotionally essential. The CIA conspiracy surrounding Chris supplies the story with danger, but its mechanics are less compelling than the quieter scenes of two old friends realizing their shared history may be the only meaningful thing either of them has left.
Still, Malkovich holds everything together. His performance is heartbreaking without begging for sympathy, recognizing that illness and regret do not absolve Chris of the atrocities he helped commit. The looming question is whether a man can discover enough humanity at the end of his life to compensate for spending most of it denying that humanity to others.
This is B-tier McDonagh, unmistakably his work and frequently entertaining, but too indebted to his earlier films to stand comfortably beside his best. Even so, the familiar ingredients still produce moments of wicked humor and unexpected tenderness. If “Wild Horse Nine” sometimes sounds like McDonagh covering his own greatest hits, Malkovich finds a bruising new melody buried within them.
Grade: B
WILD HORSE NINE played at the Toronto Film Festival. Searchlight Pictures will release it in theaters this November.
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