From In Bruges to The Banshees of Inisherin, Martin McDonagh has a thing for stories about fractured male friendships. With Wild Horse Nine, McDonagh's first new film in four years, the writer-director continues this trend, but the results are a little more uneven this go-round.
Set in 1973, the story centers around Chris, a misanthropic CIA agent in the twilight of his career, played by an endearingly caustic John Malkovich. Chris, as it's soon revealed, is living with a terminal illness and opts to go to Easter Island for one last vacation (he wants to see the "big heads" before he bites the big one). He's accompanied by his agency partner Lee, played by an always hungry (and always swearing) Sam Rockwell. Together, the two embark on their trip mere days before Chris' illness is set to reach its unavoidable conclusion... and mere months before Chile is thrown into chaos by a CIA-backed coup.
Malkovich, as Chris, delivers what many reviewers are calling the best performance of his career. I nearly agree, although I personally prefer his self-effacing title role in Being John Malkovich and his underrated turn as a spine-chilling assassin in In the Line of Fire. Here, Malkovich plays a different kind of assassin altogether, but it's this disarmingly charming and offbeat performance that may very well earn the veteran actor his first-ever and long-overdue Oscar.
As for the film's 1973 Chilean backdrop, it isn't too dissimilar from the 1920s Irish setting of The Banshees of Inisherin, with the two locales sharing grassy, rolling hills and expansive views of the sea. However, Wild Horse Nine doesn't offer the same lived-in textures. In other words, McDonagh doesn't convincingly recreate the look and feel of the 1970s, neither in the era's aesthetics nor in the vocabulary, attitudes and postures of the people in it.
McDonagh, it seems, is more concerned with having his characters be the vehicles for dark humor and interactions that are quirky for the sake of being quirky. McDonagh's screenplay may be technically well-written, but his dialogue rarely leaps off the page. Most scenes, instead, play out like pre-rehearsed conversations with telegraphed setups, punchlines and exposition dumps.
Although several moments do land with some chuckles, the movie, as a whole, doesn't quite rise to the dramatic power of McDonagh's previous work. With its insistence on quirky dialogue and comic-tinged fatalism, Wild Horse Nine ultimately ends up feeling less like a McDonagh film and more like a pale imitation of a Coen Brothers film (I'm sure it didn't help that McDonagh cast Malkovich, who previously starred in the Coens' CIA-themed comedy Burn After Reading, as well as Coen regular Steve Buscemi).
I suppose it's not the worst thing in the world for a filmmaker as talented as McDonagh to ape the Coen Brothers' style. To be sure, the result is an often entertaining, if uneven, film with a truly propulsive and satisfying third act. I just wish McDonagh exhibited as much care for his characters' through lines as he did their punchlines.
