Wild Horse Nine | Dir Martin McDonagh | ★★★★☆
‘Two bumbling hitmen contemplate life and death on an ill-fated holiday’ could be the synopsis of Martin McDonagh’s near-perfect 2008 debut In Bruges, but in this instance it is in fact a synopsis of his new film Wild Horse Nine.
It’s fitting that his latest film is about people looking back at their loves and losses, because in many ways Wild Horse Nine feels like a mid-career retrospective of his own filmography. It touches upon many of the same themes he has explored in In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Banshees of Inisherin, so aware of its predecessors that some of the funniest moments rely on at least a passing knowledge of his oeuvre.
John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell replace Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, each of them demonstrating large enough feet to fill those sizeable shoes. Opening in the American embassy in Chile in 1973, Wild Horse Nine is a kind of historical fiction, following two boorish CIA agents, Chris Carlisle (Malkovich) and Lee Chesterfield (Rockwell) as they embark on a mission to Easter Island. Carlisle hints to anyone who will listen that he was involved in some historic event; Chesterfield wishes he’d keep his mouth shut, at least when they’re in public. “We came down here to destabilise your government and it’s going great,” Carlisle quips to a pair of tourists at the airport.
Wild Horse Nine stars John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell
Malkovich, very much in his Elder Statesman era, is all prickly edges and prickly stubble, a man contemplating the end of things but still raging against the dying of the light, his bitterness a presence as imposing as the Easter Island heads they visit. Rockwell, meanwhile, appears unable to do much wrong these days, putting in a performance that’s both quietly charismatic and incredibly melancholy.
As in The Banshees of Inisherin, McDonagh is as interested in the landscape of this island as he is its visitors. Every second shot is a pan across a rugged cliffside or a silhouette of those famous heads. What is the point of it all, when we will one day be as anonymous as these nameless statues on an island of strangers?
This all sounds very bleak, and it is – but it’s also very funny. McDonagh’s trademark dry wit runs through this sad tale. There’s a wonderful skit about nations that make good cheeses being “gay” countries – France, England, Holland – while the straight countries – America and Russia – have no aptitude for cheese.
McDonagh is a master at combining high and low culture, with jokes about dwarfs playing basketball nested beside a broad Shakespearean sweep about the terrible passage of time and the futility of Western imperialism. I’m not sure it hits quite the same highs as In Bruges or Banshees, but Wild Horse Nine is another sad, funny, moving film by a man who’s up there with Alexander Payne as a chronicler of the absurdity of the human condition.