Wild Horse Nine review: Malkovich and Rockwell take In Bruges to Easter Island

Martin McDonagh has made another film about two killers who bicker their way toward a reckoning in a place they do not understand. This time the killers work for the CIA, the year is 1973 and the place is Easter Island. Wild Horse Nine is funny, mean, sad and about fifteen minutes too pleased with itself. It also has John Malkovich giving the kind of performance that makes you forgive almost everything else.

Two spies take a very bad vacation#

Chris (Malkovich) and Lee (Sam Rockwell) are CIA officers in Chile. They have spent months laying the groundwork for the coup that will end Salvador Allende's government. Chris is older, chattier and dying of cancer. He manages the pain with daily morphine. He has also started telling strangers state secrets just to watch their faces, and he may be writing a memoir.

Lee has promised to take him to Rapa Nui so he can finally see what both men call "the big heads." Their boss, MJ (Steve Buscemi), is not thrilled. A dying man with a long memory and a loose mouth is, in CIA terms, a problem. Two young Chilean students with left-wing views happen to be on the same plane. RogerEbert.com's Matt Zoller Seitz sums it up: now three security risks are bound for Rapa Nui.

That is all you need going in. The rest is the trip.

Malkovich is the reason to buy a ticket#

Malkovich plays Chris as a gleeful, sweaty old imp who has done terrible things and enjoys describing them. Seitz calls it some of the best acting ever done by Malkovich, Rockwell and Buscemi. IndieWire's David Ehrlich, who liked the film far less, still says Malkovich is more locked in than he has been since Burn After Reading.

Chris claims 68 kills. Lee claims eight, one of them carried out while eating a sandwich. Chris is appalled by the sandwich. That is McDonagh in one joke: the horror is real, and the outrage lands on the wrong detail.

Rockwell, a McDonagh regular, plays the exasperated straight man and makes it look easy. Buscemi has entered his silver-haired scene-stealer years, per Seitz. Parker Posey turns up as Lee's ex back home in what Seitz calls a daffy, if fragmented supporting turn.

It is In Bruges with a passport#

Critics noticed the family resemblance. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw calls the film almost a retread or maybe B-side of In Bruges: two pro killers, one older with a secret, stranded somewhere that baffles them. Ehrlich's headline goes further, calling it In Bruges recast as a classic Western.

Neither is wrong. McDonagh has a formula, and he knows it. Here it travels well. The swearing has the rhythm of a drum solo. The arguments wander into heaven, Nazis, moths and American cheese. Seitz's favorite line is "You only have to taste American cheeses once to understand why we lost Vietnam." It is a strong candidate.

The look helps. Ehrlich notes this is only the second feature ever shot on Rapa Nui, and Ben Davis's sun-bleached photography makes the moai look ancient and unbothered, which they are.

The real history is both the point and the problem#

McDonagh sets his usual guilt comedy against a real coup and the dictatorship that followed. That raises the stakes. It also makes the jokes harder to wave through.

Ehrlich argues the choice is a double-edged sword that cuts the film off at the knees. In Bruges opened with a fictional death. This one is shadowed by thousands of real ones. Bradshaw finds that the American setting brings out more violence and more "strenuous sweary machismo," with less comedy and less charm, much as it did in Seven Psychopaths.

Seitz reads it differently. For him the film is a "sneakily powerful story" about men facing what they have done, told with a Beckett-like rhythm. He also admits it has no suspense to speak of, and that it takes its time.

We land between them. The first half drifts, pleasantly. The second half gets busy and loud, as if the film noticed it had been sitting still. Ehrlich calls it never as funny as it is sardonic. That is about right, but sardonic is a fine thing to be.

What critics and audiences say#

Most critics are in Seitz's camp. Wild Horse Nine holds 95 percent from 220 reviews, with a 91 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Ehrlich gave it a B-minus. Bradshaw called it "not a McDonagh classic." It opened in about 1,100 theaters and took about $5.9 million over November 6 to 8, per Box Office Mojo.

Basics are from Rotten Tomatoes and RogerEbert.com.

The verdict#

Wild Horse Nine is McDonagh doing McDonagh in a new time zone. If In Bruges is your favorite, this is a very good B-side. If you found Seven Psychopaths tiring, the second half will test you. Either way, Malkovich deserves the trip.

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