Wild Horse Nine: Movie Review

Cast: John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, Parker Posey, Mariana di Girolamo, Ailin Salas
Director: Martin McDonagh

It's familiar territory for McDonagh who gives us yet another version of a relationship between two males in his latest black comedy outing. But unlike the friction of the Banshees of Inisherin protagonists, this one drops the audience squarely back easily into the kind of dynamics witnessed in In Bruges.

This time, Malkovich is wearied CIA agent Chris Carlisle whose loose lips and laissez-faire attitude in Chile in 1973 has provoked the concerns of his superior MJ (Buscemi). Taken ro Easter Island by partner Lee (Rockwell, very much Malkovich's equal - and perhaps superior - here), the pressure grows on Chris' future when Chris declares he's writing his memoirs and hinting that he had something to do with JFK's death in Dallas in 1963.

To say more is to reveal some of the admittedly obvious layers coded by McDonagh, but given this is more about the dynamics between some six protagonists, wrapped in a blanket of cold war paranoia and unease from the bosses, suffice it to say the scene is set for a series of explosive reveals.

But McDonagh less interested in doing that, building an atmosphere of melancholy and maudlin that's relatively familiar and universal in its concerns once the onion reveals its layers.

In Wild Horse Nine, both Malkovich and Rockwell give their work partnership a lived-in feel with the resultant push and pull dynamic resembling something that is both genuine and real, a fraternal bond sealed by years of events witnessed together and decisions made as a whole.

It helps that the setting of Easter Island with the giant heads can feel like a bit of perspective being shone on our leads as they grapple with their place post the coup in Chile in 1973, but while McDonagh uses an island setting once again for his leads, despite some sweeping shots which seem included to appease a tourist board, this really could have been set anywhere.

With the human dynamics taking centre stage and the regrets of a life lived creeping in at all angles, wild horse nine is the kind of drama that's blankly comedic when it needs to be and occasionally poignant despite somehow being oddly unemotional in parts 

Di Girolamo's Monica, a tourist that Chris manages to annoy in a moment of prolonged frankness in an airport, is a welcome touch of the feminine among a film that's more about males - but McDonagh tries to make something of a role for her, while wilfully sticking to the male dynamics he's so well versed in.

Wild Horse Nine is a compelling and occasionally morally complex film - but it soars more when it focuses on what makes people work, how they gristle when rubbed up against power and how one event can change everything.