“Wild” Things

With Wild Horse Nine, Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, The Banshees of Inisherin) returns to his sweet spot, delivering a darkly funny, beautifully photographed story about friendship, regret, and the ticking clock of mortality. It’s bleak, but it’s also lovely.

And it’s one of the best films of the year.

Set in 1973, shortly before the coup in Chile that overthrew Salvador Allende, the film follows a pair of eccentric CIA agents, Chris (John Malkovich) and Lee (Sam Rockwell), with a history of meddling in global events (ahem, the JFK assassination). The pair is dispatched from Santiago to Easter Island by their boss, MJ (Steve Buscemi), where they’re to lay low while the events they’ve set in motion play out.

But Chris has other things on his mind. He’s dying of cancer, he’s got a death wish, and to put it in modern terms, he has zero fucks left to give. He’s reached the point where following orders matters a whole lot less than figuring out how he wants to spend whatever time he has left. It’s up to Lee to keep Chris in check while his mentor’s increasingly erratic behavior — such as writing a memoir about his checkered past — keeps causing challenges at a delicate time.

Thrown into the mix is a pair of rebellious students (Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas) that Chris befriends, who threaten to send the otherwise unexciting visit to a remote paradise in unexpected directions.

Because, of course, nothing is ever simple in a Martin McDonagh movie.

McDonagh makes movies (including Nine Psychopaths, a personal favorite) about seriously messed-up people. Murderers, misfits, professional assholes — the kind of folks you wouldn’t invite to dinner unless you wanted the evening to end in bloodshed or an existential crisis. And somehow, he makes you love watching them. Wild Horse Nine is no exception. Again, McDonagh somehow gets us invested in what happens to characters who are hardly candidates for sainthood.

The relationship between Lee and Chris gives the movie its emotional punch. Their banter crackles with the familiarity of men who’ve known each other forever, even as their shared history raises uncomfortable questions about the lives they’ve led.

Rockwell, who won an Oscar for his work in McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, is terrific, bringing his usual quirky energy to Lee. But Malkovich? Wow. As Chris, he delivers the kind of performance that could be described as a career capper. It will surely earn him a spot on Oscar’s shortlist.

As Chris, Malkovich is odd, provocative, philosophical, and frequently hilarious, but there’s a sadness underneath it all. Here’s a man facing his own mortality who wants to call the shots until the very end — even if he gets confused about what he wants those shots to be. Malkovich makes that struggle both deeply moving and wonderfully strange.

Watching this film, and Malkovich specifically, I couldn’t help but think of the 1992 film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, in which Malkovich played the soft-spoken Lenny to Gary Sinise’s quick-witted George. Of course, in that earlier film, Malkovich played a man who couldn’t fully understand the world, and here, he plays a man who may understand it all too well.

Nevertheless, Chris and Lee’s dynamic reminded me of George and Lennie’s. Both pairs have been through a lot together, and there’s a bond between them that goes beyond friendship. But while George spends much of his time looking after Lennie, Chris and Lee are more like two old buddies who’ve spent years getting into trouble together and are now wondering what the hell it was all for. McDonagh’s film takes the scenic route, throwing in a lot more cynicism and dark humor, but underneath it all, it’s still about two guys who’ve got each other’s backs.

And what a scenic route it is. The cinematography by Ben Davis is gorgeous. Easter Island’s otherworldly beauty — including those “big heads” — provides a stunning backdrop for a story about men wrestling with some decidedly ugly truths. 

Wild Horse Nine occasionally wanders into philosophical detours that feel a bit indulgent. But even when it loses its footing, McDonagh’s dialogue and his actors keep things compelling.

Ultimately, this is a movie about finding a little grace when the clock is running out. It’s cynical without being cold, funny without trivializing its darker themes, and unexpectedly tender beneath all the weirdness.

McDonagh has delivered another winner, and Malkovich gives a performance worth the price of admission all on its own.

I’m giving Wild Horse Nine an A–.