Wild Horse Nine
★★★★½
In 2004, the world of cinema was introduced to the darkly comic mind of Martin McDonagh through his Academy Award winning short film Six Shooter. Four years later, he made a bigger splash with his feature debut In Bruges, a brilliantly clever dark comedy/crime thriller about moral reckoning and male friendship. McDonagh would continue his career as both a playwright and filmmaker with incredible works from the thrilling Seven Psychopaths to the haunting Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and the allegorical The Banshees of Inisherin. Now, four years after Banshees, he has done it again.
Wild Horse Nine is the fifth feature film written and directed by McDonagh, starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. The film also stars Steve Buscemi, Parker Posey, Tom Waits, Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas (the latter two in their English-language debuts). It premiered at multiple film festivals – including the opening night event of the 15th Montclair Film Festival which I attended with my father as a late birthday present to him – and is set to release theatrically on November 6.
Set in 1973 Chile shortly before the infamous coup d’état, CIA agents Chris and Lee (Malkovich and Rockwell respectively) are dispatched to Easter Island by their boss MJ (Buscemi). On the vast island, the two hash out their personal and professional lives – whether it’s Chris’s degrading health and memory or Lee’s strained relationship with his wife Marge (Posey) – and try to find peace of mind. However, Chris’s erratic behavior as well as his growing relationship with two Chilean democratic students (di Girolamo and Salas) threaten to derail everything.
Yes, the obvious comparison to make to this film would be McDonagh’s debut In Bruges, another film about two differently-aged men hiding in a foreign country and sorting their relationship out. That being said, another very apt comparison would be to John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (no, it’s not only because of Malkovich) in that it shares a relatively similar plot and more comparable themes of mortality, friendship, and redemption. The film, by focusing on these two very different men together in a tight situation, allows both for these themes to be thoroughly explored and these characters to be fully developed.
Another wonderful aspect of the film is McDonagh’s balance of the seriocomic tone. There are downright hilarious lines, mostly in the engaging repertoire between Chris and Lee. In some better instances however, lines that might be seen as throwaway quips are secretly Chekov’s Guns. So when those guns fire off (figuratively and literally), the feeling is paid off. This isn’t always the case with other subplots; Marge’s is one I found unsatisfying and inconclusive. But for the most part, almost everything pays off.
On the other side of the coin, the film knows when to take things seriously especially when it comes to its themes. Through Chris’s reckoning with his own mortality and Lee’s conflicting task given to him by MJ, the film creates a strong dramatic conflict accentuated by its leitmotifs (mainly of wild horses and the Moai). The backdrop of 1973 Chile also helps with creating conflict between the old and the new, in this case between the two students and the agents. There is a larger subtler conversation the film presents about the two sides of political power that is fine as is though I wish it was explored a little further.
On the basis of acting, Malkovich gives the best performance of his career since Burn After Reading and Rockwell is perfectly able to bounce off him. The supporting roles have fewer screen time but they’re able to make enough of an impact in the time they do have. In particular, di Girolamo and Buscemi are very impressive, the former more so for a big studio film. In other aspects, the cinematography, especially in the establishing shots of Easter Island, is beyond gorgeous. Additionally, the score helps create the intrigue the film needs to work at a level above and beyond.
In conclusion, Wild Horse Nine is yet another slam dunk by McDonagh, master of tragicomedy. A somberly delightful tale that I cannot wait to revisit.
