Wild Horse Nine
Being John Malkovich hasn’t been this much fun in a long time. Maybe ever.
The always wiggy actor’s magnificent star turn is the centerpiece of all the delights in writer director Martin McDonagh’s latest tragicomic masterpiece, “Wild Horse Nine.” There’s Oscar winner Sam Rockwell by his side, and folks like Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits and Parker Posey in the supporting ranks. (The casting call must have specified Weirdos.)
The big heads of Easter Island – their correct name is Moai (Moe-eye) – play major roles in the cast, as do the wild horses that roam the island. It’s impossible to differentiate between characters, settings and metaphors in McDonagh’s brilliant writing and directing. They’re one in the same.
Explaining what Chris Carlisle (Malkovich) and Lee Chesterfield (Rockwell) are doing on Easter Island would spoil the fun of just letting things unfold as McDonagh so masterfully connects the dots.
All you’ll get plotwise from me is that Chris and Lee are jaded CIA agents who have come to that part of the world in 1973, to topple Chile’s newly elected president Salvador Allende and install military dictator Augusto Pinochet in his place.
Buscemi plays their boss MJ, agency chief for the region. The problem is that Chris is losing it. He may have once been a master spy and assassin, but at this point doesn’t give a hoot about blowing his cover.
At the Santiago airport waiting for their flight to Rapa Nui, he actually tells fellow passengers Monica (Mariana di Girolamo) and Alicia (Ailin Salas) that he and Lee are CIA, before explaining what they’re up to in Chile.
It’s clear that he’s at the end of the line. Time for taking stock. Chris is thinking he needs to write his memoir, suddenly oblivious to the ticking time bombs of all the secrets he knows. His partner Lee’s relationship to this new phase of his life is one of the story’s endless mysteries. Is the younger man there to attend to him, or to keep him restrained? Or something more sinister?
Their relationship is a lot of what the film is all about. Ignore Yoda and Luke comparisons; despite their difference in age they are partners. Their banter alone, poetically profane, is worth the price of a ticket.
But Chris has a lot more than banter on his mind. At age 72 with health issues, Rapa Nui’s lonely landscapes lend themselves to contemplating his mortality. There’s not a whole lot more to do on the island, actually. “You see one big head, you’ve seen them all,” he complains at one point.
All the assassinations in his past have now led to a reverence for life in general. All forms, dinosaurs to moths. The island’s wild horses have mythic powers in his new eyes. When asked by an interviewer what the film’s title means, filmmaker McDonagh said, “I have no idea. I like numbers and I like horses.”
McDonagh’s writing is as capable of lyrical whimsy as it is of political cynicism or cosmic truths. As his award-laden filmography (including “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” and “The Banshees of Inishirin”) attests, he’s one of those singular, meaning-of-life filmmakers. His artistic genius is matched by his understanding of what being human means Or maybe that is his artistic genius. Whatever, he doesn’t let it get in the way of plotting a darkly comic action thriller that keeps the audience guessing right up to the end.
Working from such rich material, Malkovich’s performance is a revelation. The blasé sarcasm, hilarious as it is, is expected. It’s the actor’s signature, after all. The surprise comes with the touching vulnerability he reveals under the hard shell.
There’s an uncommon tenderness in his bond with his partner Lee, and in the relationship he develops with one of the young women from the airport. You wind up caring deeply for him, probably more than he cares for himself. That’s no mean feat for a figure so politically amoral who has witnessed more than his share of history-changing events through the crosshairs of a high-powered rifle.
The film’s running joke, from the opening scenes to the climax, relates to the darkest secret in Chris’s checkered career. It hearkens back to a time when conspiracy theorists were left-wingers … and smart. Not only has this secret set the course for his fate, but it also may prove life-changing for anyone seeing it on the movie screen.
Everything about “Wild Horse Nine” is fresh, surprising and richly rewarding, right up to the Rolling Stones singing “Out of Time” under the closing credits. It’s my favorite move this week, and month, and quite possibly the whole awards season.
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