I want to mention how much I enjoyed “Wild Horse Nine,” the new film from writer/director Martin McDonagh, because the first 2 reviews I saw – in The New Yorker and The New York Times were written by people who apparently saw a different movie than the one I did and dismissed it — dismissed it! — as predictable, recycled McDonagh bro opera. Really? I have no idea what they are talking about. John Malkovich gives an Oscar-worthy performance as a poetic world-weary killer with a temper and a terminal illness, paired with Sam Rockwell (no slouch) as his younger, less cynical partner in CIA crime. The year is 1973, and the two are in Chile, which means Salvador Allende, the democratically elected Marxist president, is about to be overthrown and replaced by a military dictator friendly to the U.S. Our anti-heroes appear to have set the wheels in motion before escaping to a holiday on Easter Island, surrounded by its ancient, picturesque statutory heads.
John Malkovich, a CIA lion in winter
This is the story’s political framework and exactly the kind of thing the CIA has done all over the world, as we learn from our two leading men reminiscing about their bloody professional pasts -- and from their boss, played by the masterfully unnerving Steve Buscemi, whose character even alludes to the agency whacking JFK, long a popular theory among “lone gunman” skeptics. And, to the point, not the sort of thing we get regularly out of Hollywood. Yet apparently not important to film critics concerned with showing off their knowledge of McDonagh’s earlier movies and providing insights into the director’s psychological motivation.
Whether seeing up close the inconvenient truth of U.S. foreign policy in all its ruthless iniquity will come as news to many moviegoers is anyone’s guess, but to judge from the narrow political discourse we see on television news shows, Americans are more afraid of socialism than the CIA. Which is one reason I would recommend McDonagh’s gripping, espionage-laden comedy drama and the lesson it offers in how history is really made behind the cover stories we get from talking heads on TV and The New York Times.
Another reason is Malkovich himself, a lion in winter managing to earn our alternating disgust and sympathy for this soul-barren Cold Warrior, at the center of what becomes a slow-building tragedy. Malkovich onscreen in “Wild Horse Nine,” fueled by McDonagh’s brilliant words, reminded me of the first time I saw him on stage in New York 44 years ago as the wild, anarchic brother in Sam Shepard’s explosive “True West.” Not to be missed, either one.