John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell is the duo I didn’t know I needed until 2026.
The latest film to feature the Academy Award nominee and the Oscar winner is from writer/director Martin McDonagh. His follow-up to “The Banshees of Inisherin” (which made the Top 10 list of 2022 from yours truly) stars the two as a pair of CIA agents and is set in 1973, just before the September coup d’etat in Chile.
The veteran agent Chris (Malkovich), and his younger partner Lee (Sam Rockwell), have played an important role in the coup. However, Chris is dealing with a terminal illness, and wants to spend his final days in Easter Island for a last vacation. Lee obliges to join him on a final getaway, but even on a supposed vacation, elements of their espionage background pop up.
“Wild Horse Nine” takes some time to really get going. It plays its hand early in terms of its tone, style of humor and overall approach to the darker side America’s foreign policy. It comes at a viewer fast, and while mildly amusing, it also is a while before things really settle in and the film builds depth to compliment the comedy it’s going for in the situation.
Once it does, McDonagh’s latest effort becomes an incredibly enthralling feature full of clever ideas and memorable characters, with everything coming together on a collision course toward a great finale. The film is able to do this thanks to how many things McDonagh successfully juggles.
It’s a picture that tackles the U.S. involvement in the fate of other nations, the conspiracy surrounding the death of President John F. Kennedy, the natural mundaneness that comes with being in a career for years, finding meaning in life when faced with mortality, and the complexities of a male friendship to boot. All of this is presented with a blend of humor, cynicism and honest emotion that makes for captivating cinema
A major factor in the film is the connection the characters have to the assassination of J.F.K. It’s such a huge part of the overall public consciousness, and the movie plays on that. It embraces the conspiratorial nature of that event, along with its impact on general Americana, and subsequently uses that in commenting on the actions of the United States abroad.
This adds a great deal of intrigue to the picture, and it creates a massive backdrop that casts a lasting shadow over all the characters who appear on screen. The film then balances this larger-than-life element of foreign policy with a grounded friendship between two men who’ve come to a gigantic crossroad.
Not too surprising, both Malkovich and Rockwell are fantastic on screen. Malkovich is great at portraying his character’s acceptance of death, complicated view on his career and ability to speak off the cuff. Rockwell, meanwhile, is at the top of his game, playing a practical everyman who just happens to be a CIA agent and has become stuck between a rock and a hard place as the situation develops.
The cast is wonderfully rounded out, too, with spectacular work by Steve Buscemi as a CIA chief, as well as Mariana di Girolamo who is unforgettable as a student who Chris befriends. Those performances are of course helped by the writing by McDonagh, who does a really fine job in bringing forth the right amount of harrowing truths and humor from the characters.
The director and his crew also deserve praise from a technical angle. There’s a vibrancy at play with the visual style of the film that nicely contrasts the dark deeds the characters have been involved with. The film also has scenes from an 8 mm camera perspective, as Rockwell’s character is documenting the last days of his friend. It provides a humanizing element, as do scenes where Chris is interacting with the titular horse, connecting to nature.
There are points one wishes “Wild Horse Nine” was a bit tighter in its storytelling and at times gone further to embrace its darker elements. However, this is a film that has so much going for it in basically every area. The year of 2026 has another contender on its hands. 4.7 out of 5.
Photo courtesy Searchlight Pictures
