Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Two goons go on vacation to a beautiful land while one of them has a crisis of conscience, in a film directed by Martin McDonagh. Now, stop me if you’ve heard this one: An aging spy, played by John Malkovich, decides to write his memoirs, with comic and tragic results. Now, stop. Please, just stop.
It’s not a crime that Martin McDonagh’s “Wild Horse Nine” isn’t as funny or touching as his Oscar-nominated crime comedy “In Bruges,” or as acidic and fascinating as the Coen Brothers’ “Burn After Reading.” But if it was a crime, McDonagh would find a way to forgive it. The director of “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” and “Seven Psychopaths” has an enduring love for wrong-doers and a special way of sympathizing with their plight. It’s usually the same way, over and over again, but it’s a special way and it’s often very amusing.
“Wild Horse Nine” is McDonagh’s driest crime comedy, which is a nice way of saying it’s dull. Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich star as Lee and Chris, two CIA agents operating out of Chile, right before Augusto Pinochet’s violent coup in 1973, which plunged the nation into fascism and horror. Lee and Chris aren’t the kind of American spies who stop bad guys. Their job is to put bad guys in power. Martin McDonagh’s job is to make us love them. Our job is to decide if they deserve that.
Lee and Chris have vacation time coming, and Chris always wanted to see the “giant heads” on Easter Island. He thinks they sound beautiful and magical but if you point out they’re sacred, or that the island is actually called Rapa Nui, he’ll bite your head off. The beauty of the landscape is little more than a vaguely spiritual backdrop for the worst kind of colonialists, as if it only exists for their personal awakening.
“Wild Horse Nine” has a few supporting characters who defend the island’s historical significance, but those same people are portrayed as naive and coldhearted, respectively, so it’s hard to believe this film is speaking its actual thoughts through them. No, Chris’ “giant heads” are here for Chris’s redemption and for McDonagh, who uses them as a novel locale for his chatty humor and wacky violence.
Chris is aging out of the CIA and writing his autobiography. There are a few problems with that. Chris was directly responsible for one of the 21st century’s greatest unsolved mysteries, so their boss, MJ (Steve Buscemi), orders Lee to keep tabs on him and act accordingly. Chris also gave up on keeping a low-profile. He loudly blabs at an airport that they’re in the CIA and Chile’s democracy is about to collapse, while Lee makes unconvincing excuses about why Chris is only joking. They are uniquely bad at the whole “spying” thing. That, or McDonagh is making a statement about how fascism hides in plain sight under the guise of mediocre men just talking in public. But “Wild Horse Nine” doesn’t seem terribly interested in exploring that perspective. It’s too busy trying to make us like these guys.
That’s the trick. Martin McDonagh wants everyone in the audience to love his characters, even if they’re horrifically flawed. In his best films he succeeds but in his worst films he makes misguided assumptions about what we think is funny. “Three Billboards” had a lot of fans, but a lot of us also found the film’s eagerness to declare that Sam Rockwell’s racist, corrupt cop was a nice guy all along impossible to stomach. “Wild Horse Nine” has a similar problem.
McDonagh has a very Catholic approach to redemption, and asserts that confession and last-minute atonement will redeem his most villainous characters near the end of their lives. But it’s one thing to say these characters aren’t all bad. It’s another to assume two hours is enough to make us, the audience, forgive all their sins, even if McDonagh does.
Sam Rockwell is a funny man but it’s John Malkovich’s film. He finds depth in McDonagh’s screenplay that, unfortunately, none of the other actors were able to dig up. Malkovich’s take on Chris is quiet, long-suffering, ashamed of his mistakes but proud of how efficiently he made them. He can convey more with a barely audible grumble than some actors can with a two-page monologue. Malkovich is one of the great performers and “Wild Horse Nine” is one of his finest hours. Two of them, actually. He’s in rare form.
The rest of the film never rises to that level. McDonagh’s whimsical patois quickly finds a predictable rhythm. The jokes write themselves, which wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t write themselves the same way in every scene. Ben Davis’ cinematography makes Rapa Nui look stunning, although to be fair that’s mostly Rapa Nui’s doing — and again, all the luscious scenery is in service of an off-putting, condescending westernized perspective, and not allowed to exist for itself.
This film is about two men, but that doesn’t mean the women had to be portrayed as nags, villains, patsies and/or desperately in need of a morally corrupt American spy to teach them how the world works. Parker Posey plays Lee’s cheating wife, whose life is seriously threatened but her mortality is treated like an annoyance, a problem to solve if there’s time after dealing with Chris’ feelings, and postponing an act of violence that’s going to happen no matter what, for the sake of someone who arguably deserves it — as opposed to an act of violence against a woman who doesn’t.
“Wild Horse Nine” is neither endearing nor twisted enough to work. McDonagh doesn’t make these dangerous men lovable, he assumes they’re already lovable and works backwards. He’s not particularly angry about America’s insidious meddling in international politics, even though his script directly addresses the horrors this country hath wrought, so the political commentary is hollow. Our sins are nothing more than a justification for our melancholy. They’re not our responsibility. It’s a dour mentality that makes even “Wild Horse Nine’s” funniest jokes, and there are a few, hard to laugh at.
“Wild Horse Nine” has its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Searchlight Pictures will release the film on Nov. 6.
