Adelaide Film Festival review: Wild Horse Nine
Making its Australian premiere at the opening night of Adelaide Film Festival 2026, Martin McDonaugh’s conspiracy-laced comedy is a dialogue-rich triumph.
It’s 1973 in Chile, eve of a coup d’état to overthrow Salvador Allende – the first democratically elected Marxist president of Latin America – and two CIA agents are on a mission.
But what is the mission? Chris and Lee might be there to destabilise Allende’s government, or they might be there for different reasons entirely. Santiago is the gateway to Easter Island, and perhaps they are headed there for the mercy killing of one of the agents who, now living with cancer, thinks it could be a safe place for his partner to shoot him in the head and get away with it looking like a suicide. Or perhaps Easter Island will be the site of a different killing, with one of the agents carrying out a CIA-sanctioned hit on their co-worker before he can publish a memoir outing himself as the shooter of US president John F Kennedy ten years earlier. Both of the protagonists in these scenarios is Chris, played by a careful and artful John Malkovich (Being John Malkovich, Dangerous Liaisons), and both of his murderers – be it personal or professional – is Lee, played by a consistently practical, however baffled, Sam Rockwell (Vice, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri).
Chris tells Lee that he cares more about the excessive moths he shoos out the window on rainy nights than he does about the Chilean people, and this soon extends to the wild horses he encounters –which he doesn’t necessarily talk about but clearly connects with. Same with the Big Heads of the island, or the Moai, as the are respectfully called by the people of Easter Island (but not by Chris and Lee).
The setting makes for a remarkable confessional space for Chris, as his terminal condition is set against the 60+ people he has killed for the CIA. It’s a fantastic set-up for a philosophical screenplay from writer-director Martin McDonaugh, whose earlier works In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin seem precursors for this latest, American-centric film. In all three, the men are certified killers who are at moral crossroads, and while they’re all funny films, they’re also deep films with subtly serious connections between humans and animals.
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Malkovich carries Wild Horse Nine, while Rockwell – who won a well-deserved Academy Award for McDonaugh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and also starred in his Seven Psychopaths – is solid as one half of the duo in this buddy film. But it almost feels like he’s there as a respectful counter to Malkovich, whose delicate humour is balanced so finely with an aged vulnerability that this could go down as one of his best performances.
And this is something entirely interesting about this Adelaide Film Festival opener: who is actually crucial to the film outside of Malkovich? Essentially, iconic whingy bad-guy Steve Buscemi (Reservoir Dogs, Fargo), 90s It Girl Parker Posey (The White Lotus, Party Girl) and legendary singer songwriter Tom Waits (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Down by Law) don’t even need to be in this film, and quite possibly are simply because they add a cool flavour. Chilean Monica Mariana di Girolamo (Ema), who plays one of the students Chris and Lee keep running into, however, is vital to the script, and as an actor, she proves it. It’s a small ensemble film with one major lead, and it’s no wonder it received a nomination for a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Fest for Best Film, where Malkovich won Best Actor.
The 1970s setting is fascinating for a somewhat anti-conspiracy theory film (there’s no contention that JFK was killed by the CIA; in this movie, it’s simply accepted) and makes for excellent costume design by Eimer Ní Mhaoldomhnaigh, who worked with McDonaugh before on Banshees, but perhaps more could have been done with the soundtrack.
The DJ at the festival’s Opening Night Gala afterparty took care of that, however, riffing off the film’s chronology with disco galore, despite that fact that neither Chris nor Lee seem to be the type who’d have been disco aficionados. Maybe some Doobie Brothers or CCR would’ve been more their speed. Maybe some Blondie or Talking Heads. But they were government agents after all, so who could possibly guess what their tastes might’ve been. Nothing, with Chris and Lee, can ever be as it seems, and as hard-nosed characters, they’re incredibly surprising – especially in their defencelessness.
Wild Horse Nine will screen again on Tuesday October 20 as part of the Adelaide Film Festival 2026
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