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After dates in Bruges, Los Angeles, Missouri and Inisherin, the Martin McDonagh world tour now lands at Easter Island. Against the backdrop of those giant stone heads (Moai), Wild Horse Nine<\/em> mixes the one-liners and bursts of violence of In Bruges<\/em> with the emotional wallop of The Banshees Of Inisherin<\/em>, enriched by a bittersweet meditation on ageing that is new in McDonagh\u2019s work. Perhaps best of all, it is vividly brought to life by electric performances from John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, both working at the peak of their considerable powers.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some of McDonagh\u2019s best work centres on the complexities of male friendship \u2014 usually between Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson \u2014 and Wild Horse Nine<\/em> delves deeper into this fascination. Chris Carlisle (Malkovich) is a seasoned, ornery, increasingly forgetful CIA agent, who taught the Irish how to build bombs and has \u201ckilled people in countries you can\u2019t spell\u201d; he may have even supplied the rifle that killed JFK ten years earlier. His only friend (seemingly) is Lee Chesterfield (McDonagh regular Rockwell), a younger, less cynical, more together operative who can kill a man while eating a cheeseburger. The pair have been stationed in Chile for a year, working covertly to destabilise the newly elected socialist prime minister Salvador Allende, engineering a Pinochet-led military coup at the behest of the Nixon administration. Now it\u2019s time for a break.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The twists and turns emerge out of character, but really the film\u2019s strengths lie in the chemistry between the two leads.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n On the orders of CIA chief MJ (Steve Buscemi, in his best role for years), Carlisle and Chesterfield are dispatched to Easter Island. The whys and wherefores of the sortie are best left to discover yourself but, as is McDonagh\u2019s wont, it is less about subterfuge and spycraft and more just a terrifically entertaining hang-out movie. Carlisle and Chesterfield shooting the shit (rather than politicians) is a joy. We get killer convos about moths, the correlation between \u2018gay\u2019 countries (it\u2019s very clear Chris and Lee are men out of time) and good cheese, a dwarf carrying a basketball and whether it\u2019s better to date a junkie or an alcoholic. En route, they meet a pair of Chilean students (Mariana di Gir\u00f3lamo, Ail\u00edn Salas) who berate the oldies for not using the island\u2019s proper name, Rapa Nui (\u201cYou shouldn\u2019t know the word \u2018indigenous\u2019 at your age,\u201d barks Carlisle). Carlisle also has spiritual encounters with a horse, the equine star giving a nuanced performance that makes Banshees Of Inisherin<\/em>\u2019s donkey look like a ham. Take a bow, animal wrangler Fabi\u00e1n Gabelli.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n At 72, Carlisle is dictating his memoirs and this is the closest thing the story gets to an engine, as MJ looks to Chesterfield to discover the secrets the spook will spill (MJ doesn\u2019t know the book opens with musings about whether there are dinosaurs in heaven). The twists and turns emerge out of character, but really the film\u2019s strengths lie in the chemistry between the two leads. Ostensibly a funky straight man, Rockwell threads a needle between charismatic and exasperated, hinting at hidden reservoirs of feeling toward his pal \u2014 there are also a couple of priceless phone calls between Chesterfield and his brassy wife Marge (Parker Posey, excellent), who has cheated on Lee with both a banker and a clown. After years of more forgettable villain roles, Malkovich is on fire here, by turns laconic and irascible, putting his own imprint on McDonagh\u2019s rich poetry \u2014 watch him wrap his mouth around \u201ccahoots\u201d \u2014 but also finding the soulfulness in Carlisle\u2019s predicament.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n For, as well as all the cool, colourful dialogue, it\u2019s a deeply human film shot through with melancholy, regret, remorse and the difficulty in parsing mortality, the emotions beautifully underlined by Carter Burwell\u2019s elegiac score. The music also points to another touchstone. With its wide-open spaces, fascination with horses and the sense of an ageing gunslinger coming to terms with his violent past, the film has Western vibes, a kind of Unforgiven<\/em> with zingers. That Wild Horse Nine<\/em> can knit all these disparate elements \u2014 Western, politics, black comedy, thriller, relationship study \u2014 into a seamless whole is a breathless act of juggling. If you want to nitpick, McDonagh\u2019s imagery doesn\u2019t lodge in the memory as much as his words. But when the furrow is this fruitful, who cares?<\/p>\n <\/span><\/div>\n Wild Horse Nine doesn\u2019t stray too far from Martin McDonagh\u2019s wheelhouse but it\u2019s a glorious place to visit, uproariously funny and quietly moving. Malkovich and Rockwell make a double act for the ages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1973. After disrupting democracy in Chile, CIA ops Chris Carlisle (John Malkovich) and Lee Chesterfield (Sam Rockwell) are dispatched to Easter Island. After dates in Bruges, Los Angeles, Missouri and Inisherin, the Martin McDonagh world tour now lands at Easter Island. Against the backdrop of those giant stone heads (Moai), Wild Horse Nine mixes the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-47"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15395,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15393\/revisions\/15395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Wild](\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/wild-horse-nine.jpg\")
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