Wild Horse Nine review

Delightful and raw; Wild Horse Nine is a film about friendship more than anything.

Seen at the 83rd Venice Film Festival. Wild Horse Nine opens in cinemas on 6 November 2026.

Wild Horse Nine is a film about a friendship rooted in love, disguised as a comedy film. Though it is not a comedy film in its nature, it does not fail to make the whole theater laugh more than a handful of times, as it did at its screening at the 83rd Venice Film Festival. It is lighthearted and deep simultaneously, and it takes us on this subtle rollercoaster where we shift between tension, sadness, and laughter, all smoothly intertwined with each other. Martin McDonagh sets the movie in 1973 Chile, where two CIA officers, Chris (John Malkovich) and Lee (Sam Rockwell), have recently laid the foundations for the upcoming coup d’état against President Salvador Allende, the socialist leader Chileans had voted into power.

Chris is the older of the duo and is dealing with cancer and a failing memory, in a rather humorous way, injecting himself with morphine every day, and often pondering trivial, curious matters like the lives of moths or dinosaurs. He has some guilt and secrets accumulated throughout his life, and he wishes to collect them in a memoir. In the meantime, he also has a habit of blurting out state secrets to people at random. Lee is his partner in crime, his friend, but also somewhat his caretaker, given Chris’s situation with cancer and memory loss. Not only does Lee find himself in this role naturally as a friend, but he is also secretly assigned this caretaker mission by their boss, MJ (Steve Buscemi), who is worried about the memoir and state secrets being made public by Chris.

The story unfolds with Chris and Lee setting off to visit Easter Island (Rapa Nui) as they are dispatched for a mission and to fulfill Chris’s dying wish to visit the “big heads”. During their trip, we see the duo constantly bickering but also having a profound connection and understanding of each other. Because Chris struggles with memory loss, there are moments in the film where both Chris and we, the audience, doubt Lee’s true intentions in their friendship, as Lee takes orders from MJ to get access to Chris’s memoir and thus his secrets. Lee has also been given the task of killing Chris, which, coincidentally, is also Chris’s wish; knowing he will die eventually, Chris asks Lee to do the honors for him once his dying wish is fulfilled.

Despite the doubts that Chris and we have, it is made apparent in the film that this is a truly beautiful friendship. Chris states that he considers Lee to be his only friend. It is not only through words or actions; we also see the bond being spoken through eyes and silent moments between the two. One can clearly see that Lee is immensely pained by his friend’s situation and his simultaneous obligation to duty. We watch their time on Easter Island, with numerous jokes and conversations, some bickering, and Chris flirting with the two left-wing Chilean college students they keep encountering on the island, played by Mariana Di Girolamo and Ailín Salas. And of course, some tension from the CIA bureau chief MJ, who is constantly checking on the situation.

Martin McDonagh makes a movie with few characters and few locations, but beautiful shots of Rapa Nui scenery and cleverly articulated dialogues fill the movie in a very satisfactory and fun manner. And as the film relies heavily on dialogue as one of the key parts of the story, the actors John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell take on this job perfectly. We love these characters and what they bring to the screen; Malkovich really embodies Chris as this old CIA agent who is a delight to listen to. The lines are delivered just as the movie intends. Malkovich has already won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at Venice for this role, and some might say that this is the performance that could land him an Oscar. As a perfect companion to Malkovich, Sam Rockwell fully portrays the troubled yet loyal friend who has a family to protect, a duty to fulfill, and a friend to stand by. Although he is mostly a phone call away, Steve Buscemi as MJ brings a fun but irritating pressure to the screen, giving us an antagonist who is willing to take any measure to protect himself and the CIA. And, Parker Posey gives a solid performance as Lee’s wife, Marge, adding further tension to the situation that Rockwell’s character, Lee, finds himself in.

One of the more curious elements of the film is the recurring scenes with horses. Throughout the film, even though their relation to the whole plot is never explained, the horse sequences subtly follow Chris’s journey. His relationship with one particular horse that keeps appearing on the screen catches the audience’s eye, and through that horse, McDonagh helps us better understand Malkovich’s character and his tender heart.

In the end, some scenes and characters introduced never reach a conclusion and simply remain unresolved supporting pieces, such as Lee’s wife and even the horse, which create powerful scenes but are never given their own closure. Still, McDonagh, the whole cast, and the crew deliver a film full of emotions felt to a great extent, exploring these two CIA agents’ long-lasting friendship.