We find ourselves in the final moments of Wild Horse Nine.
John Malkovich occupies the passenger seat of a small red vehicle in a secluded area on the distant Rapa Nui, commonly known as Easter Island. In front of them lies a lifeless horse. Beside him is a Chilean woman, the target of his gun for the duration of their journey.
Their discussion revolves around her possible actions to prevent an imminent military coup in her native land. This coup, which in reality led to the assassination of the world’s first democratically elected Marxist president in 1973.
In the film, Malkovich’s CIA agent, Chris Carlisle, is involved in orchestrating the coup — a concluding highlight of a violent career that is about to be cut short by terminal cancer.
Here are the options that could have been taken to avoid this, Carlisle states, smiling through the grimness like a (medically) medicated Jack Sparrow. Her nation could have picked a leader favored by the United States. Alternatively, she could have eliminated every soldier she encountered. Or, she might have dedicated her life to eradicating any child who showed even a hint of enthusiasm for militarism, camaraderie, and authority before they could don a uniform.
Sadly, even under those circumstances, she would not have succeeded, Carlisle laments — a darkly humorous acknowledgment that is both hauntingly accurate and absurdly amusing — because, regardless of her actions, there will always be more of them.
“What you should do instead is find a hut on a remote beach. Face away from the ocean and keep an eye on the treeline. Wait there with a gun until they come for you,” Carlisle suggests. The irony is that none of this is genuinely amusing.
“You’ll still die. But at least you’ll die with the wind in your hair.”
Rockwell and Malkovich excel
Sound bleak? Carlisle would probably concur. While small in scale, the film is grand in ambition and painfully honest; Wild Horse Nine doesn’t serve as a comforting escape during troubled times.
Instead, as it trails the CIA duo Carlisle and the frantic Lee Chesterfield (Sam Rockwell) on a last hurrah vacation just before Carlisle’s demise, it emerges as a darkly comic, cosmic buddy film.
In contrast to this year’s optimistic vibe-shifting titles like Project Hail Mary or the strangely upbeat Michael Jackson biopic Michael, it challenges the notion of coping with despair through hopecore. Rather, Wild Horse Nine diverts your attention from your problems by gripping you by the neck, steering you towards the void, and waiting for the laughter to emerge.
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In both the buddy and comedic elements, Rockwell and Malkovich each excel. Their collaboration has already sparked considerable Oscar buzz for Malkovich’s melancholic performance, and to a lesser degree, for Rockwell’s beleaguered counterpart.
Chesterfield emerges as a perpetually downcast reflection of Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe’s characters in The Nice Guys, as he reluctantly transports Carlisle through the wreckage of his existence. He navigates him past the stoic Moai statues (the Indigenous term for the massive heads of Easter Island — a fact that almost provokes Carlisle into violence against a group of tourists for revealing). He also rushes Carlisle into, and frantically out of, increasingly disastrous exchanges with perplexed locals.
Carlisle, who is also grappling with a dementia-like decline in his memory, can’t refrain from discussing the democratically elected leaders he has assassinated in Africa, or even the Democratic presidents he has eliminated from grassy knolls in Texas.
While this sets the stage for a kind of chaotic comedy, it does so under the assumption that humor can be found in confronting the overwhelming futility and indifferent cruelty of existence.
Malkovich, left, portrays the terminally ill CIA agent Chris Carlisle, while Rockwell plays his exasperated friend and partner Lee Chesterfield. (Searchlight Pictures)
This tactic has already been utilized by British-Irish writer/director Martin McDonagh in his other darkly humorous works such as Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Banshees of Inisherin, and the classic In Bruges.
A modest familiarity with those generally cherished black comedies should signal what to expect from this film.
Moreover, Wild Horse Nine is not entirely innovative in its alignment with the tone of those films. It recycles the concept of two killers on an unconventional getaway, reminiscent of In Bruges. It borrows from the personal tragedy explored for its defeatist, absurdist sorrow in Three Billboards. It shakes in the odd-couple romance of Banshees. Voilà: you have the formula for the charming — albeit somewhat devoid of suspense — aimlessness of Wild Horse Nine.
Resonating a dismal theme in Hollywood
As a spy story, there is little intrigue: We know who will perish and—almost to the second—when. Think less Jason Bourne and more JFK.
However, there is a significant distinction. As Carlisle mourns both his fading vitality (“She represents life, and I’m leaving it,” he tells Chesterfield regarding why a woman’s kindness unsettles him) and the individuals whose freedom he has spent his life dismantling, Wild Horse Nine ultimately proves to be far more disheartening than a presidential murder.
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It’s a theme that’s difficult to escape while watching any Hollywood production this year. From the grim January release 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, to Spider-Man: Brand New Day‘s continuation of Marvel’s recent fascination with nihilism.
We witnessed the fictional apocalyptic climate-comedy Digger, as well as the four-hour Musk documentary that “humorously” concludes with the entire planet’s annihilation. And on the horizon looms Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial: the biopic about OpenAI and Sam Altman, depicting AI as a force that eradicates all human endeavors and meaning. It was submitted to the Golden Globes as a comedy.
Given the overwhelming negativity in real life, who is genuinely requesting filmmakers to mirror this in our entertainment? If Wild Horse Nine‘s unexpected success as both a comedy and an extended farewell is any indication, it may be because there’s a unique comfort in such reflections. Perhaps when facing a metaphorical (or actual) gun barrel, there’s no better way to regain a sense of control than to smile back at it.
Or perhaps it’s simply that misery enjoys company.