John Malkovich is at his most Malkovichian when stealing CIA comedy Wild Horse Nine

Like a hurricane battering everything within reach, Malkovich is an unpredictable force of nature. At times, he plays Chris like an innocuous older relative with too many questions, needling Lee to his last nerve, but that sharp acuity can just as quickly give away to some loopy observation, or an innocent obsession with the island’s wild horses. It’s later revealed that Chris takes morphine to manage his pain from the cancer, but Malkovich makes him a sympathetic character even before that. He carries a doomed fatalism both from his illness and from the nature of his character’s line of work; either way, he knows he’s a dead man walking. That doesn’t stop Chris from being an absolute menace just about everywhere he goes.  He’s still volatile enough to make confrontations dangerous. Rockwell, playing his faithful foil, mostly tries to hang on and keep up his double-agent act, placating his boss while genuinely trying to be there for his dying colleague. 

The men’s dynamic in Wild Horse Nine is not dissimilar from some of McDonagh’s previous duos, like the pairings of Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in The Banshees Of Inisherin or In Bruges, especially the latter. Like In Bruges, the co-workers in Wild Horse Nine are on holiday for what will be one of their last trips before certain death. Like Gleeson’s character, Rockwell’s Lee is reluctant to pull that final trigger, but he has extra incentive to do so this time, since Chris made him promise to kill him before a long, protracted death from cancer. This softens the all-but-assured end, and like In Bruges, so much happens between those two points that the similarities more or less stop there. McDonagh is fascinated by these men’s tortured relationships, the camaraderie that forms when they become partners in crime, and the loyalty that becomes stronger than their marching orders. Even in the business of death, there’s an unspoken code that holds them together, til death do them part. 

As both the film’s writer and director, McDonagh has fine-tuned the speed of his zippy, screwball dialogue, which Malkovich and Rockwell trade with tenacity—as do their co-stars, like the increasingly frazzled Buscemi, a mournful Tom Waits, and a delightfully pouty Parker Posey, who makes a brief appearance as Lee’s cheating wife. While some of the antics and secondary details get a little too silly (a CIA agent holds on to the smoking gun that took out JFK for what, sentimental value?), Malkovich and Rockwell make a great match, arguing with each other and fighting against everyone else. Like in McDonagh’s previous comedies about complicated relationships, Wild Horse Nine is more than just about the shenanigans that get these men into trouble, it’s about the lonely misfit souls who find camaraderie in the least likely of partners. 

Director: Martin McDonagh
Writer: Martin McDonagh
Starring: John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits, Parker Posey
Release Date: November 6, 2026