This film was made by Martin McDonagh, who also made In Bruges (2008) and The Banshees of Inisherin (2022). It’s very reminiscent of both of them, in that it’s about a complicated friendship between two men in a dire or dodgy situation. In Bruges was about two crims awaiting punishment for a gang job cock-up. Banshees was set against the backdrop of the Irish Civil War. There is always violence, or the threat of it. As in those films, much of the exposition and character development in Wild Horse Nine takes place through edgy, brittle repartee between the partners-in-crime.
The story is set in 1973, just before the CIA-orchestrated coup which overthrew Salvador Allende, the world’s first ever democratically elected socialist leader, and installed the brutal right-wing Pinochet government.
CIA agents Chris and Lee have just spent a year in Chile destabilising the government in preparation for the coup, when they are dispatched by their boss (Steve Buscemi) to the Chilean Pacific territory of Easter Island for reasons that aren’t entirely clear at first, but there’s got to be more to it than a week’s sightseeing of what they call ‘the big heads’. It might have something to do with the fact that one of them – Chris, the older man – has become a bit of a liability by shooting his mouth off all over the place about what the CIA is up to in Chile.
John Malkovich plays Chris – a hard-bitten veteran who’s nursing terminal cancer and a black heart spilling over with cynicism and bile. Sam Rockwell plays his younger partner Lee, who’s there as some kind of escort or chaperone, or possibly something more sinister. Their CIA boss in Santiago is constantly on the phone to Lee for updates on Chris’s rogue behaviour.
It starts at the airport when they get chatting to two young women who love Allende. Chris taunts them about what’s going to happen to their beloved leader. Lee tries to hose him down, pretends it’s all a joke, then when Chris continues to goad him about their respective kill tallies – ‘I’ve killed people in countries you can’t even spell!’ – on the not-so-private environment of the plane, tells him angrily to shut the f**k up.
On the island they go to see the ‘big heads’ but they get into trouble with other tourists for not using indigenous terms like ‘Rapa Nui’ for the island and ‘moai’ for the stone heads. (It occurred to me Aussie tourists might get into similar trouble for making Malcolm Fraser jokes.) It’s a bit of a puzzle why Lee retains affection for Chris, and why he sticks up for him at all.
Is there anything to love about this bitter old badass raging against the dying of the light? He does have a soft spot for the wild horses of Rapa Nui, he makes a feeble attempt to charm the Chilean girls, he announces he’s going to call the brother he hasn’t spoken to for ten years and he might even be having inklings of remorse about all the killings he’s done – 68 at last count – which include, it is virtually spelt out, the assassination of JFK in 1963.
The scene is set for some kind of showdown. There are CIA spies everywhere, there are guns galore (this is an American setting after all), there is treachery and double-dealing. Chris asks Lee to do him a very intimate favour.
Wild Horse Nine works as both a character study and a thriller. It also has a touch of the elegiac about it. How does an old spy facing death look back on a lifetime of evil deeds in the service of his country? John Malkovich’s masterful performance gives us a pretty good idea.