Review of ‘Wild Horse Nine’, a film that opens in theaters today

With only five films, the British director and playwright Martin McDonagh already has a preferred narrative framework configured: as in “Hidden in witches” either “Waiting Souls of Inisherin”, “Wild Horse Nine” opts for a male protagonist couple in an apparently peaceful environment, Easter Island, although the foreign political temperature is feverish (in “Waiting Souls of Inisherin”the Irish Civil War; here, the imminent coup d’état in Allende’s Chile). Furthermore, as in “Three advertisements on the outskirts”, one of the characters is deathly ill and, as in “Hidden in Bruges” (and, in part, “Seven Psychopaths”), the protagonists are murderers, here, CIA agents. All seasoned with the usual self-conscious sense of humor full of shots of dialogue as irreverent as it is crude.

On the other hand, in “Wild Horse Nine”, McDonagh clearly shows his most political side with a retrospective slap at the bloody US intervention in Latin American countries in the second half of the last century and a call to subversion. He does it through the character of John Malkovich, a kind of uncomfortable legend of the fearsome intelligence agency who takes stock of his life at the door of death. Malkovich displays his unorthodox charisma with elegance and gives the character the insolent wisdom of someone who no longer has anything to lose. At his side, Sam Rockwell keeps the pulse with a nuanced performance as the loyal companion, Sancho Panza who deals with the messes caused by his comrade. The lacerating contact with reality is embodied by a brilliant Mariana di Girolamo.

McDonagh once again demonstrates, as he did masterfully in “Three ads on the outskirts”still his best work, and after he got out of hand in “Waiting Souls of Inisherin”admirable tact and precision when combining surprise and bitterness, vitriol and emotion; here, the shadow of death through, not only of an individual, but of collective freedoms.