Wild Horse Nine

Although Wild Horse Nine is the fifth feature film written and directed by Martin McDonagh, three of those have bore much resemblance to each other. The lack of variety might not inspire artistic reevaluation, but that isn’t needed if you share my view that McDonagh has made some of the best films of the past twenty years. His debut, 2008’s colorful and profane tale of two Irish hitmen laying low In Bruges, still stands as his best. That film’s leads Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson reunited on 2022’s The Banshees of Inisherin, McDonagh’s first variation on his debut. In between them, we got the very good Seven Psychopaths and the great Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, two dark, funny, original tales set on American soil. And now, Wild Horse brings back the Farrell-Gleeson In Bruges dynamic but not Farrell and Gleason themselves, giving John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell our lead roles and bringing their two seasoned CIA agents to Easter Island.

It is 1973 and Chris Carlisle (Malkovich) and Lee Chesterfield (Rockwell) are seemingly traveling abroad on business. But what business? Are they really there in the South Pacific as part of the CIA’s covert effort to destablize democracy in Chile, as Chris threatens/brags to a couple of young women they keep running into?

Chris’ memory and health are failing him. Plagued with terminal cancer, he asked Lee a month earlier to take his pain away in the remote island famous for its monumental statues, a place Chris has always wanted to visit. Or did he? A note that Chris wrote himself tells him Lee is not to be trusted. That is enough to plant seeds of doubt in our first impression of Lee as a trustworthy partner, mentee, and friend. But, Lee is also having to serve as an informant to the duo’s supervisor at the agency, MJ (Steve Buscemi), who seems awfully concerned about Chris’ plan to write a tell-all memoir and may have other eyes on the island keeping watch on the pair.

Meanwhile, back home, Lee’s unfaithful wife (Parker Posey) seems concerned with their family’s safety, as we wonder if she’s paranoid or genuinely in danger.

For someone who’s been nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar on three of his first four films, McDonagh does not seem to have much interest in reinventing himself or stepping outside his comfort zone. It’s hard to argue that he should because he keeps returning to this realm of buddy tragicomedy and proving it to be a remarkably fertile playground. In fairness, Chris and Lee are not In Bruges‘ Ken and Ray. Although they are about the age that Gleeson and Farrell now are, they are Americans. And they are not quite hitmen but spies. Still, you can’t help but recognize and love the gentle, profanity-laced head-butting and banter that define the complicated relationship of the longtime colleagues and seemingly close friends.

The CIA angle distinguishes this from McDonagh’s other dark comedies, but the film is not as political as it initially seems. It is less interested in the government agency’s interference in Chile’s government (and the JFK assassination) and more invested in what it adds to Chris’ end-of-life Catholic guilt. McDonagh’s films always wrestle with morality and mortality and this one shies from neither. Chris wonders about his own soul and the souls of moths and wild horses and good dinosaurs. This is as funny a film that 2026 has given us thus far. It is also as sad a film as any I’ve seen this year.

That intriguing balance of levity and introspection has always distinguished McDonagh’s work, dating back to his short film Six Shooter, which won 2006’s Best Live-Action Short Oscar. Very few filmmakers inject their comedy, crime, and action movies with genuine soul-searching and a critical eye towards the state of the world today. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another did that last year and ended up winning Best Picture and five other Oscars for it. Wild Horse Nine‘s not so stealthy substance has made it a fixture of Oscar prediction lists since the film premiered at Venice and well before that based on McDonagh’s history of Academy Award recognition. Could this be the David to unseat the Goliath that is Christopher Nolan’s nearly $2 billion-grossing The Odyssey in this year’s awards race? It is much too soon to say, if never too soon to speculate.

Even if this proves to be too divisive a film to win the majority vote of Best Picture (and it probably is), Wild Horse Nine is sure to seriously compete for many awards. An obvious lightning rod would be Malkovich’s lead performance, a soulful portrayal that ends up being far more nuanced and layered than our first impression of merely unfiltered comedy. Malkovich has been nominated for Best Supporting Actor twice, but most recently for 1993’s In the Line of Fire. Does he have a body of work that warrants the lifetime achievement award Oscar that some have ascribed to wins last decade for the likes of Julianne Moore and Gary Oldman? I would say so, having seen slightly less than half of his over 100 features made over nearly the past half-century. But even if you want members to vote as intended and judge strictly on the basis of this performance, it’s hard to imagine seeing anything else as moving as the actor’s characteristically tremendous work here.

Rockwell has a less showy role for once, but he too excels as you would expect. He won Best Supporting Actor for his last McDonagh film, Three Billboards, which probably makes him not so win-competitive here nine years later, although a nomination seems both guaranteed and deserved.

Buscemi and Posey have probably cracked mutliple “best actors never nominated for Oscars” lists before. They both shine in small doses here, but they’re probably too small to join Rockwell in the supporting category conversation. And I’m not sure the membership at large can ignore the Writers Branch’s latest McDonagh nomination for Original Screenplay, which is virtually a given now and not out of some kind of Faustian Dianne Warren bargain.

Whether or not the film’s awards hopes come to fruition, I hope that Wild Horse Nine gets noticed by the moviegoing public. Because the world needs smart, thoughtful movies for adults by adults. And, even though he sticks to a tone, a theme, and texture you’ll recognize, McDonagh is one of the most capable and dependable makers of such fare today.

I caught Wild Horse Nine as part of last Thursday’s opening night of the Twin Cities Film Fest, which in its seventeenth year runs like a well-oiled machine. TCFF has long been one of the most dependable highlights of October for me, an event which boasts the passion for cinema that many adults allowed to atrophy during COVID and have yet to rekindle as the industry prioritizes streaming. The excitement of a packed house all there to share in the discovery of a much-anticipated film that only a few thousand have seen to date around the world is incomparable and that communal experience inevitably shapes your perception of the film, besides turning its viewing into a core memory. My initial impression is that McDonagh’s latest would hold up under any viewing conditions, but I’d be myopic not to consider that its lively Midwest premiere played a role in making it the best 2026 movie that I’ve seen so far.

Wild Horse Nine in Lists:
#1 on 2026, Ranked 🗿 #1 on Malkovich, Ranked 🐎 #3 on Sam Rockwell, Ranked
⌖ #7 on Buscemi, Ranked 🕵 #1 on Parker Posey, Ranked