Two CIA agents with blood on their hands head to Easter Island for a vacation, and one of them decides to record all his secrets into a memoir—that's the intriguing premise at the heart of Martin McDonagh's new film 'Wild Horse Nine.' The writer-director known for 'In Bruges' and 'The Banshees of Inisherin' has once again enlisted John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell to take on his signature genre: two men who can't stand each other, laughter and violence going hand in hand. The film premiered this week at the Venice Film Festival.
The story is set in Santiago, Chile in 1973, on the eve of Augusto Pinochet's military coup. Malkovich's Chris and Rockwell's Lee are CIA agents who helped orchestrate the coup, and afterward are granted a break—the two fly to nearby Easter Island, ostensibly mixing business with leisure. Both are battle-hardened killers, with Chris even hinting he may have had a hand in the JFK assassination—the kind of past dramatic enough to fill a compelling memoir, and Chris really does start recording one, including an absurd and hilarious tangent about dinosaurs.
Meanwhile, their boss MJ (played by Steve Buscemi) keeps calling Lee from Santiago, sounding increasingly anxious—Chris is spilling too many secrets, and it may already pose a threat. But Chris has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, a fact that strips away his reason to keep quiet and gives the film's tension a clear countdown. Lee, for his part, endures a different kind of torment over the phone, arguing constantly with his unfaithful wife Marge (played by Parker Posey). The film's most moving scene, however, is a brief phone call between Chris and his long-estranged brother (played by Tom Waits).
