Martin McDonagh returns after four years with Wild Horse Nine, starring John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell and Steve Buscemi, screening at the 2026 BFI London Film Festival. A perfect trio of actors and McDonagh’s usual writing wit are not enough to put this in the same league as The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) or Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017).
Plot in a nutshell
It’s 1973 in Chile, and veteran spook Chris (Malkovich) sets off to Easter Island with his younger partner Lee (Rockwell) so they can lay low after setting the CIA-backed military coup in motion. Nearing retirement, Chris has become more erratic, unpredictable and reckless and he’s writing a memoir, which makes bureau chief MJ (Buscemi) very nervous. The entire mission is in jeopardy and it’s Lee’s job to make sure Chris is contained.
The Review
Having had his start as a playwright, it’s no surprise that the screenplay is the bedrock of Martin McDonagh film and Wild Horse Nine is no exception. Out of this source springs the entire fountain. And because McDonagh is a master scribe and a brilliant writer of dialogue, his movies are mostly carried by the actors; the more solid the script, the more solid the performances. That’s why his actors often shine in ways that end up on career highlight reels. John Malkovich now joins the likes of Sam Rockwell (as seen in Three Billboards), Frances McDormand (Three Billboards) and Colin Farrell (Banshees of Inisherin) in the category of having a role-of-a-lifetime written that only they could bring to life on screen.
Watching Malkovich chew up the scenery with McDonagh’s dialogue as a weary CIA veteran who’s seen too much and killed too many is an endless delight. He practically steals every scene he’s in, which is saying something because Rockwell is equally excellent as the conflicted and confused Lee Chesterfield. It’s difficult to pick just one scene that stands out but a conversation at breakfast in which Chris describes the correlation between gays and cheese in Western democracies is especially outrageous and hilarious. Buscemi completes the triangle as the cantankerous station chief who hates Chris’s guts (the feeling, of course, is mutual).
Wild Horse Nine also uses its unique setting of Easter Island well. With its monolithic figurehead statues and beautiful wild horses that become a fixation for Chris as the twilight of his life fast approaches, the opportunity for beautiful compositions and frames isn’t wasted. That alone, next to Malkovich, is worth the price of admission to catch this film on the biggest screen you can find.
There is, however, something of a bad aftertaste underneath all the sardonic wit and wink-wink-nudge-nudge playfulness with these characters. I got the feeling that the attitude to the general role of the CIA as democracy-destabilizer, and the more specific role of the biggest conspiracy of the 20th century which becomes pivotal to the story, was pretty flippant. And that flattened the whole experience for me.
There’s another thing that’s sorely missing from this story compared to McDonagh’s more accomplished films. I had a hard time caring for these characters. Yes, they’re funny and fascinating, but they’re not good people. And even with Chris, the film’s emotional epicenter, I struggled to find the empathy that was necessary for the story to fully resonate.
So it’s with a heavy heart as a big McDonagh fan that I proclaim Wild Horse Nine a mixed bag in the grand scheme of things, even though it’s A+ in the shits and giggles department.