John Malkovich Gallops Away With 'Wild Horse Nine', NPR Review Says

John Malkovich plays a dying CIA operative in Martin McDonagh's "Wild Horse Nine," and according to NPR critic Bob Mondello, he "more or less gallops away" with the film. That's the verdict, and it's hard to argue with the evidence.

The film, reviewed by Mondello for NPR, stars Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as CIA agents whose banter laces through a story of American-directed foreign coups. McDonagh's specialty, Mondello notes, is comedy that is "dark and violent and liberally laced with profanity" — the register of "In Bruges" and "The Banshees of Inisherin." This time, assassins hang out.

Where and when does it happen?

The setting is 1973, at an airport near Santiago, Chile, shortly after the democratic election of Salvador Allende. Malkovich's Chris, described by Mondello as "a puckish ticking time bomb," strikes up a conversation with two college coeds (Mariana Di Girolamo and Ailin Salas).

"We came down here to destabilize your democracy, and it is going great," Chris tells them. "So we decided to take a little side trip to Easter Island and see the big heads."

His partner Lee, played by a cool, quiet Rockwell, would prefer a low profile. He does not get one.

What's wrong with Chris?

Plenty, it turns out. Mondello reports that Chris has been dirtying his hands in shady U.S. operations since the 1950s — Bay of Pigs, Congo — and is now contemplating a memoir, to the annoyance of their boss, played by Steve Buscemi. Worse: Chris is seriously ill and forgetful enough to keep notes in his pocket reading, among other things, "remember that you're dying" and "don't trust Lee." He self-medicates with morphine and communes with the island's wild horses. Lee, meanwhile, spars long-distance with his not terribly devoted wife Marge, played by Parker Posey.

"I stopped listening in the middle of that. Was it funny?" Marge asks Lee over the phone. "How are the kids?" he ventures. "Oh, who cares?" she replies.

How does the comedy land?

Mondello credits McDonagh with keeping the back-and-forth amusing whether it's untethered from the real world or illuminating horrors like American-directed coups. The pair's running gags include a dispute over whether Chris ever actually killed anyone in Czechoslovakia, and Chris's defense of his nightlife: "I drove around and I shot up a car. What are we, hippies?"

The banter turns haunting when the story turns grim, as it inevitably does in a McDonagh plot. Mondello finds Chris's illness "plenty poignant," with Rockwell's Lee toggling between protective and combative — as Malkovich, in the critic's phrase, plays "a man whose wits are failing, though his wit is not."

What's the final word?

Mondello calls Malkovich's Chris "a creep for the ages — eerie, airy, amoral and seductive," and notes the actor brings a bit of his "Ripley's Game" game to the role. The understatement is the weapon here.

Arrival on Easter Island, with its majestic prehistoric statues, does not stop the snark — "once you've seen one big head, you've seen them all," Chris shrugs. For a film about a dying agent and a democracy about to die, that's the joke doing double duty. McDonagh's audience will know exactly what to do with it.