| Worth seeing: | for another dose of Martin McDonagh's dark buddy comedy, with John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell's jaded spies fizzing off each other |
| Director: | Martin McDonagh |
| Featuring: | John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, Ailín Salas, John Heffernan, Mariana Di Girólamo, Paola Giannini, Parker Posey, Poppy O'Shaughnessy, Tom Waits |
| Length: | 117 minutes |
| Certificate: | 15 |
| Country: | Chile, UK, US |
| Released: | 4th November 2026 |
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Chris (John Malkovich) and Lee (Sam Rockwell) are CIA agents, based in Chile, in the run-up to the 1973 coup to overthrow the Marxist president.
Chris is showing signs of ageing and and wants to write his memoirs, before it’s too late. His behaviour is becoming erratic and it’s worrying the bureau chief, MJ (Steve Buscemi), so he sends Chris to Easter Island for a break – and dispatches Lee to accompany him – or more accurately, keep an eye on him.
The bosses are concerned about Chris getting a bit too friendly with a couple of young leftist students and they’re particularly keen to make sure his memoirs don’t reflect what he was doing in Dallas, ten years earlier.
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
Martin McDonagh delivers pretty much what you might expect from him these days – essentially a darkly comic, thought-provoking buddy movie; we’ve seen Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell bouncing off each other twice, first in In Bruges and later in The Banshees of Inisherin – and now we get John Malkovich’s world-weary CIA agent winding down with a jaded colleague, who knows he’s got rather longer ahead of him than his charge.
Cue talk of why they do the job, how they do the job, the consequences it has for their home-life – in Sam Rockwell’s case, the effect it’s had on his marriage to Parker Posey – and what they hope for their future.
When a CIA agent gets to that point in life, with disease and dementia knocking at the door, it’s never quite clear how much of a future might still be waiting in store, which adds to the texture of every conversation between them.
Against the backdrop of the striking scenery of Easter Island – and the “big heads” that perhaps any seasoned traveller might want to see before they die.
Malkovich’s Chris is a fascinating oxymoron – a secret agent who is now more interested in spilling the beans, whether through careless chat or his own memoirs, while Rockwell’s companion is torn between doing what’s right for his country – and what’s right for his friend. Steve Buscemi is also on sparkling form as the “good guy” who seems anything but.
Wild Horse Nine is a peculiarly parochial film about world-changing events – a small cast of characters whose actions could have global implications – but at its heart, despite some sporadic violence and inevitable subterfuge, although it’s not McDonagh’s most complex film, it’s effortlessly entertaining – a warm, darkly funny, coming-of-age tale – coming of old age, that is.