5 Reasons To Watch Wild Horse Nine

Two CIA agents, one extraordinary island, and decades of terrible secrets: Martin McDonagh’s latest film takes his fascination with friendship, violence, and guilty consciences into a shameful historical period in American foreign policy. Set shortly before Chile’s 1973 military coup, Wild Horse Nine follows operatives Chris (John Malkovich) and Lee (Sam Rockwell) as a trip to Easter Island becomes an increasingly uncomfortable reckoning.

With Oscar buzz building and a cast including Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits, and Mariana Di Girolamo, here are five reasons to put it on your cinema calendar...

1. John Malkovich’s Oscar buzz performance

Malkovich’s wonderfully unique presence makes him an inspired match for McDonagh’s dialogue, and he’s rarely been better. As Chris, an ageing operative confronting the meaning of a life spent lying and committing violence in America’s name, he brings mordant humour, vulnerability, and disarming honesty to a man whose conscience is catching up with him.

The performance has already earned him Best Actor at Venice, and Oscar speculation is gathering momentum. When Chris encounters a young, politically engaged Chilean student Mónica – a woman from whom he is separated by culture, nationality, generation and political ideology – he is compelled to be honest with her, and the unexpected conversations between the two characters unfurl with both emotional tenderness and the weight of history, allowing something beautiful and unexpected to emerge amidst the violence.

2. McDonagh’s trademark humour and political sharpness

Fans of In Bruges will recognise the ingredients present in Wild Horse Nine, including the bickering partners, outrageous language, sudden brutality and the creeping suspicion that nobody can outrun what they have done. Here, those familiar pleasures acquire the weight of historical complicity.

The friendship between Chris and Lee also has echoes of The Banshees of Inisherin, where the backdrop of political violence underscores their long-held friendship. But in Wild Horse Nine, politics and violence are even more present, and looming over the country they’re visiting. Chris and Lee’s friendship unfolds against American efforts to undermine Salvador Allende’s democratically elected government, ahead of the coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power. Their arguments and evasions raise uncomfortable questions about the stories people tell themselves to make cruelty bearable.

Buscemi, who plays CIA boss MJ, believes comedy can draw audiences towards that difficult history.

“I am excited to see if it will educate people in the States about what happened and bring them in through the humour,” he says.

Expect laughs with a distinctly bitter aftertaste.

3. Easter Island provides an extraordinary setting

The island’s monumental moai statues and vast, exposed landscapes offer a spectacular setting for men accustomed to operating in the shadows. There is something deliciously absurd about CIA operatives bringing petty grievances and irreverent swearing into such a sacred landscape.

According to McDonagh and producer Graham Broadbent, Wild Horse Nine is only the second film ever to shoot on Easter Island, following 1994’s Rapa Nui. Securing permission involved approaching the island’s council a year before filming and building relationships with the Rapa Nui community, and once production began, cameras and period cars had to arrive by boat, with respect for the island central to the production.

That rare access gives the film a striking sense of place, and its remote setting becomes integral to the atmosphere of isolation and reckoning, as Chris confront his demons. As he gazes upon with the sacred indigenous offerings, the film’s exploration of colonialism, control, violence and power become even more weighted – and Ben Davis’ cinematography highlight the island’s awe-inspiring beauty.

4. The film’s timely political relevance

Who gets to interfere in another country’s future? What violence becomes acceptable when governments invoke national interests? And how often do the people responsible face meaningful consequences? Although set in 1973, Wild Horse Nine speaks directly to contemporary anxieties about intervention, democratic vulnerability and the distance between political rhetoric and human suffering. Given America’s recent actions in Venezuela and ongoing political upheaval across the globe, the story feels startlingly relevant.

Asked whether Americans have properly reckoned with their country’s involvement in Chile, Buscemi is unequivocal: “No, I don’t think so.” For Di Girolamo, the history remains painfully present. Remembering those killed, disappeared, tortured or forced into exile requires continuing to tell these stories, and with McDonagh’s talent for making dark subject matter entertaining and accessible, cinema becomes a way of opening conversations that political institutions might prefer to avoid.

5. The buddy comedy with an unexpected tenderness

McDonagh has always understood the dramatic possibilities of friendship, particularly between men whose affection emerges through insults, irritation and the stubborn refusal to leave each other alone. Malkovich and Rockwell make a wonderfully mismatched double act, their comic timing giving Chris and Lee’s longstanding partnership the familiarity of an exhausted marriage. Beneath the bickering lie questions about loyalty, complicity, and what happens when one friend starts questioning the life both have built.

As in In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin, masculinity can be violent and destructive, but also quirky, vulnerable and unexpectedly tender. Chris’s unlikely friendship with Mónica opens another emotional door, as the young student inspires him to look back on his life and legacy in a different way, encouraging her to fight on. Across generations and political divides, their connection becomes an unexpected friendship that crosses political lines to find each other’s humanity.

Wild Horse Nine is in Irish cinemas from November 4.