A Martin McDonagh production is always something to giddily anticipate. It’s bound to feature a “different” kind of story featuring super-smart dialogue, well-drawn characters and loads of fascinating ideas.
Wild Horse Nine delivers on all those things.
In Rapa Nui
Lee (Sam Rockwell) and Chris (John Malkovich)
Chris Carlisle, portrayed to a subtle perfection by John Malkovich, is a CIA bigshot with a decades-long career and a highlights list that involves undercover adventures in Guatemala, Congo, Bay of Piga and Dallas.
He used to really like his work, but at this late stage in his career, he’s turned on it. It’s all made him go cross-eyed. As he reevaluates his life, he’s questioning what it’s all about. He’s soured on a lot of things. That includes life itself. He’s 72 and dealing with terminal cancer; he’s on morphine and he’s in his final days. At this point, on his current mission in Santiago, Chile, he cares more about the moths he “escorts” to his apartment window than the people around him.
It’s the summer of 1973 and he’s wheeling and dealing with Augusto Pinochet to topple the Salvador Allende-led government.
And so it Is he also finds himself enlisting his long-time partner, Lee (Sam Rockwell), to perform one last mission: kill him. On Easter Island.
The location is ideal for his demise. It’s a remote place. Isolated. There’s no rapid-response homicide squad, so it’d be easy for Lee to sneak away after the “event.”
Chris is Catholic, so suicide is not an option. Never mind the fact Chris has tallied 68 kills during his career. Lee is merely a newb, with only eight. (And, while not mentioned explicitly, there’s an odd irony in this context with Easter and Easter Island.)
His memory is fading and he’s losing his boundaries for public conversations. He’s openly talking about his work as a CIA agent, his work to overthrow governments. And his chit-chat expressing a desire to write a tell-all autobiography has created loads of heartburn from within the CIA. (But Chris wants it to be unique and comprehensive, so he’ll start with the dinosaurs. It’ll take a while to get to the juicy stuff.)
Chris has a lot of material to work with, if he can remember it all. That includes those 68 kills, one being a significant historical figure whose death is riddled with conspiracy theories.
What a great character. So phenomenally well-played by Malkovich.
And what a great setup.
Indigenous
As with the best of all movies, Wild Horse Nine works on many levels. It’s devilishly funny. The dialogue is crackling. The acting is immaculate, across the board. But sitting so comfortably with the comedic elements is a solid drama involving an old man who’s turning into something of a lost soul. And, of course, there’s a sharp political edge to Wild Horse Nine that is so timely and ominous.
McDonagh is in very fine form, presenting a work on par with his best. And what a spectacular list to be on: In Bruges, The Banshees of Inisherin, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. And those are just a few of his movies. There’s also his live theatre catalog, equally impressive and award-winning: The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Lieutenant of Inishmore among them.
McDonagh throws in loads of history and deep, engrossing ideas.
Chile now has a new left-wing, communist president, but he’s also the first democratically elected leader of the struggling country. But Pres. Allende will be dead in September, Chris too openly asserts. The army will take over. Leftist students, unionists, socialists and folk singers should proceed with caution. They’re about to be rounded up and tortured, Chris advises a couple of Chilean college girls who happily support their new president.
In Cahoots
Monica (Mariana di Girolamo) with Chris
What a finale.
A cast of characters, conspiracies and duplicitous actions all collide amid those “big heads” on Easter Island, which is to say in indigenous terms, amid all those Moia Aringa Ora on Rapa Nui. There’s Chris, Lee, their CIA regional lead (MJ, well-played by Steve Buscemi) and those two Chilean college girls Chris and Lee met on their way to Easter Island.
What’s scary is how easy it is to draw parallels with the United States today. Was the movie release timed around the U.S. elections? Unlikely. In that regard, the Friday before might’ve been more effective than the Friday after. But not by much.
Nonetheless, couple it with recent events and the timeliness adds a superb level of intrigue. There’s the surprise comeback win for Brazil’s 81-year-old Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, toppling supposed frontrunner Flavio Bolsonaro by 4.4 million votes. In Serbia, student protests finally led to an election last month that replaced Aleksandar Vucic, after 12 years of leadership, with a collection of relative unknowns. And there was the Blue Tsunami in the U.S. midterms.
It’s fascinating to consider how the U.S. and other outsiders undermined local efforts and made moves to control Chile’s fate.
In the context of Wild Horse Nine, it’s a strange, disturbing cycle of violence that even pulls in Lee’s unfaithful wife, Margie (Parker Posey), as a pawn. And it’s eerily akin to the Trojan Horse in The Odyssey. What forces are being invited in? And by what underhanded means?
Leave it to McDonagh to tie together disparate ideas such as Arkansas, Hank Williams, horses, suicidal birds, political revolution, conspiracy theories and big stone heads in one thoroughly absorbing mix of comedy and drama.