Martin McDonagh is obsessed with the Kennedy assassination.
I mean, I get it. I am too (there was a particular period after reading Stephen King’s 11/2/63 in college that I went deep.) The need to know what happened, who did it, and why has been a part of American pop culture for over fifty years. I just never expected McDonagh, the Irish playwright and film director behind In Bruges and Banshees of Inisherin to be really into it too. And never did I expect it to be his launching off point for his latest “two guys argue about life” picture, Wild Horse Nine.
You’ve hopefully seen the trailers or commercials for it at this point (it feels like they’ve been everywhere in recent months) but, in case you need a brief summary, the film follows Chris (John Malkovich) and Lee (Sam Rockwell), two CIA agents visiting Easter Island in the 1970s. They’re there to see the “big heads” as Malkovich keeps intoning, but the real reason they’re there? I won’t say. But in true McDonagh fashion, there is much ruminating about life, death, and the pursuit of dinosaurs (I’m not kidding). Or maybe it’s happiness? Malkovich and Rockwell argue about these things and more in hilarious, and often tragic, fashion over the course of the runtime — again, a staple of McDonagh.
The Kennedy assassination comes into play, as do other historical events (the film takes place entirely in the shadow of the CIA-backed coup of Chile in 1973). The decision to have his two lead characters talk directly about these events, and even live through them, makes McDonagh’s latest a decidedly American picture, in contrast to 2022’s Banshees, and a real examination and contemplation of American interventionism on the domestic and global scale. It would have been enough for McDonagh to settle here, let his characters ruminate on these matters, but instead he chooses to go deeper with another McDonagh staple: the haunting of Catholicism around every edge of the picture.
Like other McDonagh protagonists before him, Malkovich’s Chris is deeply Catholic and doing his best to get to Heaven after he dies — even if it does include dinosaurs, or a nazi who jumped on a grenade to protect his mother. He brings a crucifix with him wherever he goes. And, after discovering (minor spoiler) that he is dying from cancer, he feels compelled to confess all his sins in a tell-all memoir that he records throughout the film. This decision, of course, puts him at odds with his superior at the CIA (Steve Buscemi) and with his own partner, Lee. But Chris…Chris is like many of us. He wants to be a good Catholic. He wants to be devout. He wants to confess before the curtain falls on his life.
It is these matters that drive the film as Chris and Lee wander Easter Island, meet and attempt to befriend two Chilean girls, and deal with CIA fallout. These broader narrative details — an older figure and a younger protégé, bickering away in a sleepy foreign place — are not new for McDonagh. Anyone who has seen In Bruges already knows these trappings well. But it’s the character decisions within the film, the themes he chooses to focus on, and its ultimate conclusion that separate Wild Horse Nine from his earlier films – and make it, perhaps, his best yet.
For those familiar with McDonagh’s work, the sharp-witted dialogue present throughout will come as no surprise. I’m not sure I laughed harder at a movie this year — outside of, perhaps, The Debut (we’ll get to that one next month, I promise!). An extended exchange between Chris and Lee about who has killed more people is still in my head weeks after seeing it, along with questions about whether democracy, being gay, and cheese are somehow linked (again, I’m not kidding.)1
But for every joke in the film, there is also a dark twist. Catholicism, as I said, haunts the film. These moments of darkness — or, conversely, light — poke through the riffs and the wit to give Wild Horse Nine its soul. Can its characters be redeemed after all they’ve done? Perhaps not. But their desire to change, to be redeemed, to see Eternity are consistently, deeply moving.
I’ve said much about McDonagh, and deservedly so. But I’d be remiss not to talk about the performances. Malkovich has been in movies and TV now for decades, perhaps most memorably in Rounders, In the Line of Fire, and Eragon (ok, here I wish I was kidding, actually). His distinctly offbeat line readings have been a trademark of his acting style from day one, but here? It’s maybe, just maybe his finest hour. His Chris is as hilarious and he is heartbreaking, and he will be absolutely at the Oscars come next year. Whether or not his odyssey to finally win the gold will eclipse Matt Damon’s own Odyssey is yet to be seen.
As for Sam Rockwell, I was lucky enough to catch a screening of Wild Horse Nine at the Middleburg Film Festival in early October, with McDonagh in attendance. In the Q&A after the film, he called Rockwell “the finest actor of his generation,” and it’s hard to argue with that assessment after seeing another stellar performance from him here. He won the Oscar for another McDonagh picture, Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, and is just as strong, if not stronger, here. His two-handed dialogue with Malkovich powers the film, and his storyline is just as moving, if not more tragic.
That word — tragic — is perhaps the best to use for the entirety of Wild Horse Nine. Yes, it’s one of the funniest movies of the year. But it is infused with such soul, and deals with matters that can only be described with that same word: tragic. The Kennedy assassination. The Chilean coup. A man simply hoping he can see his mother in Heaven after he dies. Wild Horse Nine is many things, like many a McDonagh picture. Yes, it’s a comedy. Yes, it’s a tragedy. But, most of all?
It’s one of the best movies of the year. See it.
100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #78: In Bruges (2008)
Amidst a timeless landscape of medieval faith and morality, a modern hitman must come to terms with his own guilt and the inherent contradictions of his conscience. It was a premise that seemed natural for the iconoclastic Irish playwright Martin McDonagh’s first foray to the big screen. Experience in the grit and grime of working-class London along wit…
Editor’s Note: This is the funniest movie scene of the year.