Wild Horse Nine Review: Funniest Heartbreak of The Year

Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine is a hilarious, emotional, timely story that uses one unbreakable friendship to explore countless fun ideas.

McDonagh’s latest film centers around two CIA agents, Chris (John Malkovich) and Lee (Sam Rockwell), who have spent months dispatched in Santiago, Chile destabilizing the country’s democracy following the ascension of their new communist leader. When the agency sends them both on a week-long trip to Easter Island, Sam and Lee are looking forward to the peace and quiet of the idyllic Pacific Island. What follows, however, is a journey of self-discovery and conspiracy that threatens to tear the two friends apart and ruin their mission. 

On the surface, Wild Horse Nine reads like some kind of gritty, propulsive thriller. In reality, McDonagh is much less interested in covert geopolitics and international espionage than he is concerned with two individuals on deeply personal journeys—for whom secrecy and murder is just the backdrop of a more human, intimate story. Much like The Banshees of Inisherin, McDonagh’s newest film is fuelled entirely by the razor-sharp chemistry between its two leads. Chris and Lee are hopeless, selfish, and completely out of their depth, but their incompetency is much less interesting than the unpredictable roads it leads them down. 

McDonagh has such a unique gift for writing characters where everything that comes out of their mouths is ludicrous and hilarious, and yet he manages to make you deeply care for them all the same. John Malkovich is perfectly cast for this role; one minute he’s eating breakfast and powering through a ridiculous monologue about the quality of European cheeses, and before you’ve taken a moment to stop laughing at the lunacy of it all, McDonagh sucks all the air from the room with some dark revelation or sombre reminder of the true stakes behind their mission. Because as much as Chris and Lee are unpredictable and silly, there’s a real weight to their friendship that makes their inevitable conflict and the true stakes of their mission hit even harder. 

Wild Horse Nine occupies the strongest corners of several different genres without truly committing to any of them. It’s a dark comedy that never sacrifices the stakes of its story, a gritty thriller that never feels too heavy or solemn, a spy movie that doesn’t rely on intricate politics to keep the viewer enthralled, and a grounded drama that never feels like the plot is secondary to its characters. Very few writers would be able to pull off such a mercurial, transcendent screenplay, but it’s the electricity of McDonagh’s writing and the tangible charm of the two lead actors that really makes Wild Horse Nine soar.

Malkovich will inevitably and deservedly be the biggest talking point among Wild Horse Nine’s cast, but the film’s supporting cast also deserve credit for upholding the sense of disbelief within this bold, wacky story. Sam Rockwell plays exactly to the screenplay’s strengths, serving as the ‘straight man’ and comedic foil in almost every scene, and essentially carrying the audience through the film’s unpredictable antics on his strained shoulders.

Wild Horse Nine is a perfect example of what makes Martin McDonagh such a consistent, reliable writer. It’s funny when it needs to be funny, dramatic when it needs to be dramatic, and compelling without fail. The way the story drifts through genres, inciting rounds of laughter then playing with rich, philosophical ideas in the same breath, is extraordinary, and it’s going to end up ranking among the most sheerly entertaining films of the year.

Wild Horse Nine had its World Premiere at the 2026 Venice Film Festival on September 3, 2026. The film will be released globally in theatres on November 6, 2026.