Wild Horse Nine

It is a measure of Wild Horse Nine's restraint, if not its budget, that the Rolling Stones song with which it nearly shares its name doesn't appear. Another by them does, Out Of Time, and as we start with a bit of film being recorded in a CIA office in Santiago de Chile in mid-1973 it's clear that among the discarded, the unfaithful, the old-fashioned, without a doubt it's running out.

John Malkovich is Chris, a veteran of enough operations that he couldn't name them all even if he could tell you their names. If arithmetic holds that might, just, have included Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and if you're thinking that those precede the CIA as known then so does he. This isn't Malkovich's first turn in the intelligence community, Burn After Reading, burnt-out in Red but even in his wider career it's among his best. Opposite him is Lee (Sam Rockwell), a colleague behind another gun and a friend behind another camera.

They're going to Easter Island, Rapa Nui, to see the big heads, the moai. The reactions to the names and their indigenous origins are part of the film's ingenious swearing, including at least one instance of what the BBFC calls 'very strong language'. There's that aplenty, inbetween the various other high crimes and misdemeanours that come with Chris and Lee's profession. They're defenders of democracy, making sure that when people vote they choose the right side. If they don't get it right the first time, well, that's where the CIA comes in - to give them another shot.

The comparisons to In Bruges are obvious, but five films in this features many of McDonagh's trademarks. Comedy so black it starts to bend light around it, a poetry of violence and lyrically harsh language, a meditation on friendship, on truth. As with his Flemish debut this has two killers in a tourist destination, their boss (or at least a figure with some authority) will turn up, here Steve Buscemi's MJ, their also-abbreviated station chief. There's more going on behind him too, conspiracies that scholars of Central American politics will recognise as well as others that made bigger splashes across American consciousness and consciences.

It's gorgeous, Ben Davis has recently been bouncing between artier fare dripping with character actors like Wicked Little Letters and nakedly commercial slop saturated with character references like Kraven The Hunter. Here he's pointing more than one camera, across the wide expanses of the Pacific, the looming countenances of the half-buried sculptures, then managing the smaller handheld film cameras, across the wide expanses between Chris and Lee, the looming countenances of the half-buried friendship. There's also a moment of glorious beauty in Monument Valley, that framing part of a delightful near-cameo by Tom Waits.

Carter Burwell is another returning McDonagh collaborator, his score joined by work by other musical artists as various as Hank Williams, Diana Ross, and Carl Orff. That diversity is better reflected in the cast with Mariana di Girolamo's Monica and Ailin Salas' Alicia. They're two young Chilean women that Chris and Lee meet waiting for their flight, and as their paths cross (and recross) we'll learn more about all of them. Not all of it positive either.

I don't think this will convert anyone who's not already a fan of McDonagh, though even in his handful of films there are divided opinions. I can't say that nihilism isn't attractive, indeed nothing can quite compare to it, but even this balance of friendship and fate might not be enough to make this a film some will want to avoid. Bleakly comic and comically bleak aren't quite opposites, but their contrasts are where Wild Horse Nine finds its power.

I'll often quote another CIA figure, James Jesus Angleton, who used the phrase 'wilderness of mirrors' to describe the business of counter-intelligence. Every time I reflect upon it I find its mixture of poetry and inaccuracy ever more compelling, and the same is true for Wild Horse Nine. The island has a population of undomesticated equines, and as they too cross (and recross) the paths of the characters we'll see how their wildness, and more, is reflected in their natures.

Malkovich and Rockwell are magnetic, even when acting with off-screen figures in telephone calls (including with boss MJ and the even more distant figure of Parker Posey's Marge). Scenes that require them to watch one another are hypnotic, as a double-act it's one of this year's best. The chemistry between them is made even more special by its circumstances, by the malleability of truth, by their willingness to wield the hammers that test the mettle of any ideologue. As with other films in the grey areas of crime and spies like Confessions of Dangerous Mind and Catch Me If You Can everything is true, especially the lies, and the only thing you can trust is that you can't trust anything. Except, perhaps, that quality will out, and there's cartloads of it here. The language, the violence, these are all things that some audiences will bridle against, but those whose palates are more tolerant will find much here to curry their favour.

Reviewed on: 30 Oct 2026