CIA operatives Chris and Lee take a break from working to undermine Chile to visit Easter Island, setting the stage for Martin McDonagh’s new dark comedy film Wild Horse Nine.
Written and directed by Martin McDonagh, the movie reunites the Anglo-Irish auteur with actor Sam Rockwell alongside John Malkovich as two agents dealing with the fallout of their covert work working to undermine Salvador Allende’s government in Chile in 1973. The pair journey 3,500km out into the Pacific to gaze at the remote region’s famous monolithic statues staring blankly out to the mighty ocean.
Malkovich stars as Chris Carlisle, an eccentric operative riddled with terminal cancer and Catholic guilt over his very amoral life. While recording memoirs into a Dictaphone at night, Chris reflects on decades of covert operations with all the exacting efficiency of accountants. I’ve killed people in countries you can’t even spell,
he tells his partner.
Back in Santiago, bureau chief MJ — played by Steve Buscemi as a man with all the charm of a talking liver spot — worries that Chris’s loose-cannon status will betray the agency as he slowly losing his mind. Buscemi joined the cast in March 2025, replacing Mark Ruffalo in the production. Fearing the bureau chief’s panic, Chris’s frank tape recordings include the Dallas parts
which could reveal his role in JFK’s assassination.
The script blends historical events surrounding the Pinochet dictatorship with absurd road-trip bickering. Guatemala ’64, Congo ’60, Dallas ’63
Malkovich’s character recounts about his global exploits, later declaring that You only have to taste American cheeses once to understand why we lost Vietnam
at another juncture in the narrative.
Director Martin McDonagh wrote the part of Lee specifically with Sam Rockwell in mind, continuing a working relationship that previously spanned Seven Psychopaths, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and a Broadway staging of A Behanding in Spokane.
Reviewers have mentioned the movie as a companion piece to McDonagh’s 2008 debut In Bruges, while also featuring a cameo appearance by Tom Waits.
Distributed in the US by Searchlight Pictures as a UK, US and Chile co-production, Wild Horse Nine opened in UK and Irish cinemas on November 4 followed by a US theatrical release on November 6, holding a 93% Tomatometer score from 120 reviews.
When in Venice. WILD HORSE NINE hits theaters this week. Get tickets now! #WildHorseNine pic.twitter.com/X4etrpp16b
