Wild Horse 9 at the 62nd Chicago International Film Festival

“You get old, you start to question shit. Regret shit.” That line — spoken by John Malkovich’s Chris in Martin McDonagh’s *Wild Horse Nine* — is the emotional spine of this film. It lands harder than it has any right to in a buddy comedy about two aging CIA hitmen on Easter Island (John Malkovich’s Chris and Sam Rockwell’s Lee). As buddies, these two are great together, like McDonagh’s other buddy movies (“In Bruges,” 2008; “7 Psychopaths,” 2012; The Banshees of Inisherin,” 2022).

Chris is 72, terminally ill with cancer, and morphine-loose with his secrets. He’s killed 68 people in the service of his country’s CIA. Now, facing his final days, he’s haphazardly telling those secrets to random girls at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Sam Rockwell’s Lee Chesterfield — his partner of decades, who’s only killed 8 — keeps trying to cover for him or get him to shut up. Their boss, M.J. (Steve Buscemi), has ordered Lee to kill Chris to prevent the release of classified information. There’s also the matter of a rifle that may or may not have been used to assassinate JFK.

EASTER ISLAND

Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich in “Wild Horse Nine” at the 62nd Chicago International Film Festival.

The film is set against the backdrop of the CIA-backed assassination of Salvador Allende in 1973 — the first democratically elected Marxist president of a Latin American country, who was replaced by Augusto Pinochet’s regime. Chris and Lee were there. They were complicit. And now, on Easter Island, surrounded by wild horses and giant stone heads, Chris is wrestling with what he’s done. Enjoy Director of Photography Ben Davis’s gorgeous aerial photography of Rapa Nui and the immense stone heads and the wild horses gamboling about on the plains. There are also two young girls at the airport (Mariana di Girolamo as Monica, Ailin Salas as Alicia). Maybe Chris can save Monica by sharing his crystal ball predictions of what is going to go down in Monica’s country on September 11, 1973—a symbolic date then and now.

CAST

The performances are fantastic. Malkovich doesn’t run circles around Rockwell — they’re equals in this bizarre, eccentric scenario. Watch Rockwell’s eyes in the moment when he’s torn about granting his friend’s final wish. It’s Oscar-worthy. (And yes, the character’s name is CHRIS, not CHARLIE, as per one reviewer.) Enjoy Steve Buscemi’s turn as M.J., the CIA boss—Buscemi’s always dependably good. Parker Posey as Marge reminds us of how good she is, also (“The White Lotus”).

RANDOM

The script is populated with absurdist lines that seem random until they don’t: Chris discussing a dead horse — “He made me a lot less scared of dying.” Lee to his wife about her infidelity with a clown — “Not once did I say fuck a clown.” His brother Jim (Tom Waits), whom he hasn’t spoken to since 1963 (when Jim threw a potato at him), “What goes around comes around. It feels kind of random.”

Parker Posey, as Lee’s alcoholic wife, steals every scene she’s in (there should be more). When asked on the antique-looking telephone how the kids are, she responds, “Uh, Who cares?” Pure comic gold.

FINALE

By film’s end, Chris is ready to die. “All in all,” he says, “I coulda’ killed a lot less people and I shoulda’ hung out with a few more horses.”

But the last and most important message of the film belongs to brother Jim, in an exchange that sums up McDonagh’s entire project. Chris says, “The country was already shit, we just didn’t know it.” Jim responds, “Well, we know it now.”

CONCLUSION

It’s a film about reckonings — personal and political — masquerading as a black comedy and featuring wild horses,i.e., rogues like Chris, with hilarious digressions about dinosaurs in heaven, moths, dwarfs carrying basketballs, and the mammoth stone heads of Easter Island (“Once you’ve seen one big head you’ve seen them all.”) See it if you want to laugh during perilous times while also pondering the satirical message(s.) It opens November 6th.