Oscar contender Wild Horse Nine is a fierce attack on the CIA - and may divide US viewers
Searchlight PicturesThe new film by Irish director Martin McDonagh stars John Malkovich as a 1970s agent wrestling with his conscience and in danger of spilling secrets. It's a spy yarn with real bite.
Martin McDonagh loves to make films about two men of different ages swearing at each other in scenic locations. The Irish writer-director's filmography includes a cult gangster comedy, 2008's In Bruges, and his 2022 hit, The Banshees of Inisherin, which was nominated for nine Oscars. And the latest example of this particular sub-genre is Wild Horse Nine, a farcical 1970s spy yarn starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as a pair of CIA loose cannons with loud mouths and even louder shirts.
It could be a case of, why change an Oscar-winning formula – or Oscar-nominated formula – anyway? But Wild Horse Nine has its surprises – the main one being that beneath the meandering plot and eccentric, foul-mouthed dialogue, there lurks a lacerating critique of US foreign policy. "It's definitely my most political thing," McDonagh said in Empire magazine. "I haven't expressed a political opinion, really, in my films, and this one's pretty out there."
What to expect from the film
Malkovich and Rockwell (who won an Oscar for his role in another McDonagh film, 2017's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) play Chris and Lee, two agents stationed in Santiago, Chile in 1973. They have spent their careers cheerfully destabilising foreign governments and assassinating anyone deemed too left-wing by their bosses, and they're currently plotting a coup against Chile's newly elected president, Salvador Allende. But now that Chris is close to retirement, he is having doubts about the murders he has committed, supposedly in the name of the greater good.
Chris and Lee go for a short holiday in the film's scenic location, Easter Island, the Pacific home of the monumental Moai statues. But Chris has soon had enough of sightseeing. He's more interested in working on a memoir, so he can make sense of the coups he's facilitated before old age, illness and morphine addle his memory completely. He's even started telling strangers about his classified work, including two Chilean students (Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas). Naturally, his bureau chief in Santiago, MJ (Steve Buscemi), isn't too pleased. Worried about the secrets that Chris might be about to spill, MJ informs Lee that his friend and partner shouldn't leave Easter Island alive.
This being a McDonagh film, there are some wonderfully rambling conversations about the relationship between democracy and cheese, and there is a heart-wrenchingly compassionate study of male friendship. After years of playing forgettable parts, Malkovich at last has a role that's worthy of him – one that uses his signature disconcerting strangeness, but allows him to be tremendously vulnerable, too. It's no wonder that he is already being talked about as a contender for next year's Oscar for best actor.
Hollywood's depiction of the CIA
Again, none of this is unusual for McDonagh. What's different about Wild Horse Nine is its frank condemnation of the CIA's interference in democracies around the world. Hollywood has had an up-and-down relationship with the CIA, sometimes portraying it as heroic (eg the Jack Ryan franchise) and sometimes not so much (Three Days of the Condor). Malkovich himself co-starred in 1993 Clint Eastwood film In the Line of Fire as a former CIA man who plots to assassinate the president, and in the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading (2008) he was another CIA veteran who is planning to publish a memoir.
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But few films are as disapproving of the Agency as Wild Horse Nine. Unlike some spy thrillers, it isn't about shadowy rogue operatives or byzantine conspiracies that can be exposed and dismantled. McDonagh's thesis is that CIA operatives do their job efficiently and happily – it's just that their job is horrifically unjust.
The question in Wild Horse Nine is whether Chris is willing to atone for his actions. The question for McDonagh is whether the film's stark message will please or annoy US viewers – and Oscar voters.
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