I have been looking forward to Martin McDonagh’s latest film, Wild Horse Nine, all year - and that’s in spite of the fact that I quickly grew to despise the initial trailer for it, which has played before virtually every theatrical screening I attended throughout 2026. The Irish playwright and filmmaker’s distinct combination of pitch-black comedy, wonderfully eccentric yet still fully real characters, razor-sharp dialogue, and unexpected emotional devastation has defined his career thus far. 2022’s The Banshees of Inisherin is my personal favorite of his, which made his next project an easy one to anticipate.
Wild Horse Nine is a complicated film. There’s considerably more going on beneath its familiar comedic exterior than those countless, repetitive previews might suggest. McDonagh has crafted another fascinating, mournful character study, one that features one of the greatest onscreen performances from one of our greatest screen actors, John Malkovich. But it’s also a film whose most interesting ideas are at the same time the source of its greatest complications.
Opening in Santiago, Chile, in 1973, Wild Horse Nine introduces us to Chris Carlisle (Malkovich) and Lee Chesterfield (Sam Rockwell), two longtime CIA operatives whose work has helped shape the political landscape of the entire globe. With the agency actively working to destabilize progressive governments, including that of current Chilean president Salvador Allende, the two men have plenty of blood on their hands. Their latest assignment has been going so well that the men take a leisurely trip to Easter Island, or Rapa Nui if you prefer its Indigenous name (neither American men do). However, Chris is a dying man with a lifetime of secrets, and Lee’s increasingly complicated responsibilities (including having to answer to MJ, his boss in the bureau played by Steve Buscemi) suggest that this trip might be considerably more permanent than either would like to admit.
It’s difficult to overstate just how phenomenal Malkovich is here. Chris is an absolutely reprehensible human being, a career murderer, a political saboteur, and a civilization ruiner who discusses decades of American imperialism with the casual enthusiasm of someone recounting a particularly memorable vacation. He openly jokes about destabilizing democracies, casually admits to murdering people, and seems considerably more sympathetic toward the island’s moth population than the people whose lives his government has helped destroy. Yet beneath that outrageous behavior is an aging man increasingly preoccupied with mortality, Catholic guilt, and the possibility that there’s nothing waiting for him after death. My favorite line is a thought he speaks aloud at one point, “Does cancer have a heaven? What a shit Heaven that would be…..poor cancer”. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the film’s peculiar sense of ethos, and exactly the kind of darkly humorous introspection McDonagh excels at.
Malkovich delivers every wonderfully inappropriate line with such an effortless combination of arrogance, vulnerability, and genuinely complicated sadness that it’s difficult to imagine anyone else inhabiting this character. Rockwell is equally terrific as Lee, whose exasperation provides an essential straight-man counterbalance to his mentor’s increasingly erratic behavior. Their relationship gives the film its emotional foundation, particularly as the distinction between professional obligation and genuine affection becomes increasingly difficult to maintain. Buscemi also makes a terrific impression while the supporting performances from Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas, who play a pair of leftist Chilean students that Malkovich provokes early on, provide an important connection to the people caught in the middle of these men’s political machinations.
As expected, McDonagh’s rhythmic, elevated dialogue is frequently impeccable. The exchanges are biting, profane, and very funny, even when the subjects being discussed are anything but. There’s an especially compelling contrast between Chris’ seemingly limitless willingness to discuss the atrocities he’s committed and his growing desire to believe that he might still be capable of doing something worthwhile with the limited time he has left. His friendship with Lee, and his encounters with the two young women, become opportunities to confront the loneliness and regret that have followed him throughout his life. It’s a mournful film about the inevitability of death, the fear of being forgotten, and the uncomfortable realization that some people spend their entire lives doing terrible things before finally finding reasons to question themselves.
However, Wild Horse Nine becomes considerably more complicated when it attempts to reconcile those personal revelations with its broader commentarial ambitions. It’s certainly interesting watching aging fascists and enablers of American imperialism confront the consequences of their actions; the film is viciously critical of the machinery behind American interventionism, and its historical references make little effort to soften the reality of what these men and who they represent have done. Yet there’s an uncomfortable contradiction in allowing someone so instrumental in the suffering of countless others to become the center of such an intimate redemption story. Why do these men get to experience the full spectrum of human emotions, reflect on their lives, go out on their own terms and potentially find some measure of peace, while the countless victims of their actions never received the same opportunity and never will?
It’s a thorny question, and unfortunately, McDonagh isn’t entirely able to untangle it. The film’s satirical approach isn’t the problem, nor is its interest in exploring the possibility of personal atonement at this scale. Rather, it’s the suggestion that remorse and a few final acts of kindness might somehow provide a meaningful resolution to decades of untold calculated cruelty. The world these men helped create doesn’t suddenly become less terrible because they’ve finally developed a conscience at the last minute. It’s doubly frustrating to lean towards the possibility of reconciliation when the consequences of their actions clearly continue long after they’ve left the picture. At times, the dialogue also makes its intentions a little too explicit, spelling out ideas that would have been considerably more effective left unsaid.
Still, there’s no denying the power of what McDonagh has accomplished, particularly with Malkovich at its center. The production’s use of Rapa Nui, reportedly only the second feature film ever to shoot on the island, gives the story a remarkable sense of place, with its ancient statues and sweeping landscapes providing an appropriately imposing backdrop for these characters’ final reckoning.
Wild Horse Nine is a fascinating, funny, and frequently uncomfortable film that has stayed with me considerably longer than I expected. I appreciate its willingness to examine the loneliness of aging, the weight of regret, and the possibility of finding some humanity in people who have spent their lives actively destroying it. I’m just not entirely convinced that those people deserve the kind of grace the film ultimately seems willing to extend. McDonagh has made another undeniably worthwhile film, but its most compelling ideas are also the ones it struggles hardest to reconcile. Sometimes the past is too ugly, and the damage too extensive, for a downbeat Western to provide anything resembling a satisfying ending.
‘Wild Horse Nine’ is now playing in theaters.
