Is Wild Horse Nine McDonagh's Best?
Last Thursday, September 3, the Venice crowd stood for 13 minutes after Wild Horse Nine, and the reviews have been arguing about it since. Martin McDonagh's new film puts John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell on Easter Island as CIA officers Chris and Lee, dispatched from Santiago by their bureau chief MJ (Steve Buscemi) shortly before the 1973 Chilean coup. Parker Posey plays Lee's wife Marge, Tom Waits turns up as Chris's estranged brother, and the whole thing runs a tight 118 minutes.
The Golden Lion is decided this Saturday, September 12, by Maggie Gyllenhaal's jury, and on the notices so far Wild Horse Nine and Malkovich are the names to beat. The catch, for the rest of us: Searchlight does not put it in cinemas until Friday, November 6. So this week's question is where it sits in his run, and what to watch in the meantime.
What Venice actually said
The reviews describe a film with two engines. The first is the two-hander. Chris has terminal cancer and has taken one last assignment; Lee has agreed to help him die when the time comes. ICS Film, in a 4.5-star review, called it "a roaringly funny yet deeply moving spy comedy" and described the two men arguing over Chris's morphine and the keys to their rental car "like a married couple". David Rooney at The Hollywood Reporter called Malkovich's performance "the real revelation" and "his best in years".
The second engine is the satire, and that is where the room splits. David Ehrlich at IndieWire found the film "prickly but unconvincing" and gave it a B-. Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian gave it three stars and pinned the drop on the American side of the film: "more violence", "less comedy, less charm" than McDonagh's earlier work. The aggregate scores tell the same story: 89 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from 27 critics, 80 on Metacritic from 18. Very good, not unanimous. Which is to say: a McDonagh film.
Where it sits in the run
McDonagh has two modes. In the first, two men are stuck somewhere they cannot leave, talking, with death somewhere in the room: In Bruges, The Banshees of Inisherin. In the second, he points the camera at America, fills the frame with an ensemble, and lets the tone lurch from farce to grief and back: Seven Psychopaths, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. His best films come out of the first mode, and the ones people still argue about come out of the second.
On the reviews, Wild Horse Nine is the first mode wearing the second mode's clothes. An island, two men, one dying: that is Banshees with a rental car. The CIA and the coup are the American satire bolted on top. Read the notices with that in mind and they sort themselves. Rooney's praise is for Malkovich, which is the two-hander. Bradshaw's complaint is about the American half.
So, the stance: do not crown it yet. In Bruges keeps the top spot until at least November 6, because a 13-minute ovation and an 89 do not beat a film that fans have been quoting for eighteen years. But if the island half is as good as ICS and Rooney say, this slots in at number two, above Banshees, on the strength of Malkovich alone. A 72-year-old who has done this for fifty years and is still being called a revelation is the story of the festival, and when the awards talk came up at the press conference he pushed it straight back at the film: "the nicest thing is the film getting attention."
Start here, in this order
If you have never seen a McDonagh film, skip past the one that won the most awards and start with the one where every trick he has is on display.
The Malkovich rail
The other reason to spend this week catching up is the man himself. The obvious first stop is Being John Malkovich, still the strangest tribute an actor has ever received while alive. Go back further for Dangerous Liaisons, where his Valmont fixed the screen persona for good: precise, amused, faintly dangerous. Burn After Reading handed him a CIA man once before, the demoted analyst Osborne Cox, and it is worth rewatching just to imagine Chris Carlysle as the same guy thirty years and one diagnosis later. And Ripley, from 2024, is a reminder that he has spent the last few years doing some of his most interesting work in television.
On Saturday, September 12, if Wild Horse Nine takes the Golden Lion, nothing changes for you until November. Put In Bruges on this Friday, September 11, instead. It is the film McDonagh has been remaking ever since, and by all accounts he has just done it again.
