Oscar contender Wild Horse Nine attacks the CIA |
Oscar contender Wild Horse Nine is a fierce attack on the CIA - and may divide US viewers
The 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........