Wild Horse Nine gallops towards success

Put a story with two professional assassins written and directed by Martin McDonagh using a bucket list travel destination and you might come up with In Bruges.  Or, as it turns out, Wild Horse Nine, which overturned all my concerns that it might simply rehash the director’s previous success. Fortunately, a whole bunch of distinctive traits arise.  Easter Island steps in as the exotic location, one likely to get a huge set-jetting bump from people who see its magnificence on screen and decide to go there because of Wild Horse Nine. Other set-jetting types may get a little push for Monument Valley in its small scene. In any case, Easter Island appears not just to provide stunning visuals, but because its isolation suits the plot perfectly. The island makes a clever choice in a clever movie, where every bit of dialogue leads to a significant moment later on. But best of all comes that specialty of McDonagh, the teaming of an older and younger guy in a sparring relationship. It happened before with In Bruges plus The Banshees of Inisherin and rises to heights for Wild Horse Nine as John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell toy with one another playing 1970s CIA agents taking a brief break from their duties fomenting uprisings in Chile. As a man suffering from debilitating pain and illness, Malkovich gets to put on a hazy spin delivering his dialogue, yet at the same time using razor sharp timing for lines whose laughs come with a tinge of wistfulness. Rockwell behaves much like a comedy duo’s sidekick, his reactions making the situation funnier. But, given a timeline with revolutions, political assassinations and undercover shenanigans, Wild Horse Nine never feels like a joke. Humor and heart make it easier to digest the harshness of life.