Two CIA Agents Trade Banter on Easter Island: A Review of 'Wild Horse Nine'

In 1973, when the CIA was pulling strings around the world, veteran agent Chris (John Malkovich) travels to Easter Island with Lee (Sam Rockwell), a fellow agent and his junior colleague. In Chile, where they had worked, socialist Salvador Allende had taken office as president in 1970, but the two men already know his fate. That matter is out of their hands now. Chris and Lee spend time on Easter Island, each harboring a secret he can scarcely bring himself to tell the other.

〈Wild Horse Nine〉, the fifth feature from playwright-turned-director Martin McDonagh, is considerably lighter than his previous films. Whether “lighter” is the right word is another question. According to Chris, the CIA pulls strings across the globe. Naturally, its operations take place in secret, and most are carried out to make the world fit “the free world America wants.” Whether a movie about such people can fairly be called light is worth considering.

Still, compared with earlier films such as 〈Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri〉, which begins with a rape and murder, or 〈The Banshees of Inisherin〉, in which a lifelong friend threatens to cut off his fingers, this account of Chris and Lee’s travels draws laughs throughout. Chris makes eccentric pronouncements, while Lee bristles at his willfulness yet privately looks at him with sympathy and respect. The humor is sharp, as one would expect from McDonagh. The F-word is routine, and the sexual jokes can be a little uncomfortable, but Malkovich and Rockwell’s deadpan performances and the somewhat softened subtitles keep them from becoming too off-putting.

But if the movie offered nothing beyond laughs, 〈Wild Horse Nine〉 would not have been invited to the Venice International Film Festival, nor would Malkovich have won Best Actor. Without giving away specifics, the film treats a “conspiracy theory” surrounding an event that shook American history as established fact. By making Chris a cog in that conspiracy, it builds tension through an unusual battle of nerves among him, Lee and MJ (Steve Buscemi), the head of the CIA’s Chile station.

Part of 〈Wild Horse Nine〉’s appeal is that the chemistry between Chris and Lee, which makes audiences laugh, doubles as a psychological contest beneath the surface. On Easter Island, where the natural landscape remains intact and few people are around apart from tourists, the two behave like friends. From each man’s perspective, though, there is a goal he needs to accomplish. Their journey, with secrets running beneath it, feels like a balancing act between comedy and espionage. It comes fully to life through performances delivered at just the right moments, built on the blueprint of McDonagh’s superb screenplay.

For all the pleasure 〈Wild Horse Nine〉 offers as a movie to watch, it is also remarkably ambiguous. That makes its aftereffect all the more lasting. The two CIA agents on Easter Island in 1973 are comical, but both are men who have stopped at nothing for their country. They work in secret and must not be seen. Their jokes can, at times, sound like mockery directed at the world. The CIA and an event that shook history (along with the conspiracy theory surrounding it) clearly occupy the center of the story. Yet the film can also look like a portrait in which the sadness of longtime colleagues parting ways is tangled with the regrets of an old soldier who manipulated the world from the shadows as he pleased. Like most good works, 〈Wild Horse Nine〉 is a mysterious film that can be read in different ways depending on where the viewer focuses. Focus on the CIA and the conspiracy theory, and it can look like an exploration of the roots of a world, past and present, dominated by one country’s power. Look at the film through Chris, and it can feel like an old man’s bitter reflection on his life.

In that sense, 〈Wild Horse Nine〉 is both a superbly made entertainment and a film worth pondering. With only three or four major characters, it delivers moments when tension suddenly takes hold, or when a line tossed off for a laugh returns to strike an unexpectedly deep emotional chord. The pleasure and lingering feeling of those moments are hard to capture precisely in words. At the center are the performances of Malkovich and Rockwell, already mentioned several times here and certain to remain a topic of conversation at least through next year’s Academy Awards. It would also be a shame to miss the small but memorable contributions of Steve Buscemi and Parker Posey. 〈Wild Horse Nine〉 opens November 4.