Martin McDonagh has built his career on emotionally stunted men running their mouths. The British-born Irish playwright began his movie career in 2008 with In Bruges, starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as hitmen in crisis hiding out in the picturesque Dutch city. Echoes of that concept can be seen in his latest movie, Wild Horse Nine, which follows a pair of CIA agents played by John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell moping around Easter Island in the months before the 1973 Chilean coup. But while McDonagh’s first and fifth feature films are both bloody, dialogue-driven affairs, over the past 20 years the writer-director’s style has mellowed, if not his passion for gobshite.
McDonagh is a writer first, and the screenplay for Wild Horse Nine is just about perfect. Every scene comes loaded with witty exchanges and quirky monologues: Malkovich’s rant about American cheese is a highlight, as are his musings on whether dinosaurs go to Heaven. As the story unfolds, however, every single one of these silly, seemingly random bits pays off, revealing the startling skill behind the casual hangout structure. It’s such a rich text, in fact, that you might not pick up on every callback and subtle connection on the first go-around: There are moments of foreshadowing, but most of them are fleeting, and only come together in retrospect — appropriate for a story that’s full of half-truths, double agents, and sudden flashes of insight.
