03/09/2026 - VENICE 2026: John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell star in another classic Martin McDonagh tragicomedy, this time with larger helpings of geopolitical paranoia

Sam Rockwell (left) and John Malkovich in Wild Horse Nine

“I shouted out, ‘Who killed the Kennedys? When after all it was you and me.’” So rasps Mick Jagger in the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil”, their famous sideswipe at 1960s vice. It’s far less contentious these days to talk about the US CIA’s historical and similarly devilish doings, as a hidden hand in the developing world and Global South whilst they sought to win the Cold War. But the question of “sympathy” is key; in his Venice competition premiere Wild Horse Nine, Martin McDonagh asks us to spare some penance for a particular devil, the Irish-American CIA hitman Chris Carlisle (John Malkovich, at his best), who has a The Hague-worthy democracy-dismantling rap sheet. Especially through Malkovich’s delicate, yet leonine, performance, the British-Irish director and playwright just about manages to elicit such a feeling.

The film finds the director in fine form, in full command of his stage-derived skillset, although detractors will still be resistant to his weakness for self-indulgent macho backtalk and his ironically quite humourless love of punching-down invective; whilst being one of his richest screenplays to date, it’s also brazenly sentimental. But more than this, it’s a pleasure to be in the company of his collaborators, from the regulars in his acting repertory company to cinematographer Ben Davis and composer Carter Burwell, whose stripped-back score is beautifully intertwined with a few classic rock and political folk needle drops. If Chris’s character arc has designs on our heartstrings, Sam Rockwell is an ideally steady, tough-minded comic foil as Lee, his wary, but loyal, field partner.

We’re in 1973 Santiago, Chile, and the wheels on the CIA-assisted ousting of socialist president Salvador Allende are turning. Every office, high-governmental or not, has its veterans, and Chris is again present in the field, whilst contemplating retirement and treating a terminal cancer diagnosis with occasional morphine injections. Yet this is the era of the USA’s “Paranoid Style”, and every spymaster becomes an internal security liability eventually; in a nod to the Coen brothers’ still-sharp political satire Burn After Reading, another Malkovich-starrer, Chris is gradually dictating his memoirs into a voice recorder, and his loose tongue, and personal inventory of smoking-gun evidence and belongings, puts a target on the assassin’s own head. Whilst the CIA’s South America chief MJ (Steve Buscemi, cast well against type) shares cigars with the advancing Chilean military, the dramatic fuse starts burning as Chris and Lee enjoy a recreational getaway to scenic Easter Island, where they meet and then cautiously interact with two attractive left-wing students (Mariana Di Girolamo and Ailín Salas).

Wild Horse Nine is ultimately a personal tragedy of mortality, carefully disguised as a cynical political thriller. Initially poking fun at the political spectrum’s extremes, it lands in a place where – in one of the script’s many references to Catholicism – individual sinners can redeem themselves, alongside the USA, too, if it’s self-reflective enough for a moment. It’s a land that Chris, as a symbol of it, and one who knows it best, finally concedes is “shit”.

Wild Horse Nine is a co-production by the UK, USA and Chile, staged by Blueprint Pictures, in association with Film4 and TSG Entertainment. Searchlight Pictures also produces and is its worldwide distributor.

Photogallery 03/09/2026: Venice 2026 - Wild Horse Nine

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Martin McDonagh, John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, Mariana Di Girolamo
© 2026 Fabrizio de Gennaro for Cineuropa - fadege.it, @fadege.it