Wild Horse Nine Review: A Bloody C.I.A. Holiday Farce

By Daniel Okafor

Martin McDonagh’s latest film, Wild Horse Nine, opens in Chile in 1973, with John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as C.I.A. (Central Intelligence Agency) agents. The R-rated movie runs 1 hour 58 minutes and blends action, comedy, crime, drama and thriller. It then makes a rather large mess of all five.

That is not entirely a complaint. McDonagh’s joke works through excess. The review calls the setup “A C.I.A. Holiday,” and the film does not resist the premise.

It follows Chris and Lee from Santiago to Rapa Nui, better known as Easter Island. They check into adjacent hotel rooms. They tour, talk, drive, visit the island’s moai (massive stone figures) and, possibly, kill people.

Their mission supplies the background hum. The agency is preparing to help overthrow Chile’s democratically elected government through a coup (a seizure of power). The movie treats this as an extended bar joke. Two men enter a country; the country happens to be Chile in 1973. There is no clean punchline. The target is any viewer still hoping McDonagh will add more gore to his customary talk and splatter.

What turns a holiday into an operation?

The story offers little historical specificity. The review supplies one historical anchor: in 1970, President Richard Nixon ordered the agency to impede the inauguration of Chile’s newly elected socialist president, Salvador Allende. The coup remains months away.

Chris cannot keep the operation secret. He blurts classified information to two young women he and Lee meet en route: Monica, played by Mariana di Girolamo, and Alicia, played by Ailín Salas. Chris’s habit turns the operation into something he cannot contain.

Chris is gravely ill. As his grasp on reality loosens, Malkovich fills and empties Chris’s face with quicksilver changes of expression. He draws the viewer close, then pushes them away. The performance creates an insinuating, destabilizing menace. It stays mesmerizing even when the story turns grave and its rationale becomes unconvincing.

What do the island and hats contribute?

Most of the action stays on Rapa Nui, a beautiful but restricted locale. The agents and statues loom over the island, and McDonagh reinforces that pairing with hats: a pork pie for Chris, a cowboy hat for Lee and disk-like forms for the statues. The visual gag does little work. It merely thickens a thin story.

The island gives the camera something worth looking at. The staging has visual luster, and the actors appear to enjoy McDonagh’s chewy writing. The charm remains real. So does the narrative shortage.

McDonagh appears to aim to please, so the film offers talking, driving and sightseeing before it risks a more serious register. That bargain leaves the coup in the background and the holiday in the foreground.

Where does McDonagh’s pattern lead?

McDonagh’s feature debut, In Bruges (2008), placed two Irish hit men before a reckoning in the Belgian town of its title. The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) put two old friends on a fictional Irish island in 1923, during Ireland’s civil war, and set their falling-out in motion.

Wild Horse Nine retains that visual luster and chewy writing. Carter Burwell provides the music, while animals serve as symbols and sacrifices.

Within that company, Malkovich supplies the film’s most durable unease. Rockwell’s Lee wears the cowboy hat. Buscemi plays MJ, the C.I.A. bureau chief. The review describes him as “marinating in his own bile.”

For McDonagh, the next test is whether the coming coup can gain dramatic weight without more blood. As written, Malkovich’s face carries more menace than the plot, and the hats carry more charm than the history.