Martin McDonagh is back, and he’s brought two of the most reliably eccentric actors in the business along for a ride that sounds like True Detective meets a particularly unhinged episode of The Love Boat. The filmmaker behind In Bruges and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is taking a sharp left turn into the Pacific with Wild Horse Nine, a new comedy-crime-thriller that pairs John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as a couple of CIA lifers who are very much in need of a vacation - and absolutely shouldn’t have one.
The setup alone is worth the price of admission. It’s 1973, and the drumbeats of the Chilean coup are getting louder by the day. Our heroes, Chris (Malkovich) and Lee (Rockwell), aren’t exactly in the thick of it, though. Their bureau chief, MJ - played by the always-welcome Steve Buscemi - has shipped them off to Easter Island, presumably to keep them out of trouble. Instead, they land in a paradise of monumental stone heads and simmering conspiracy, where the biggest threat isn’t political unrest but the fact that these two partners have decades of baggage, secrets, and probably a few too many shared traumatic memories to unpack over pisco sours.
Wild Horse Nine is less about the mission and more about the mood. McDonagh has always had a knack for making morally rotten people weirdly charming, and this might be his most overtly buddy-comedy setup yet. Malkovich and Rockwell are a pairing that feels inevitable in hindsight - two actors who can oscillate between deadpan menace and chaotic slapstick within a single scene. The prospect of them bouncing off each other amid the island’s moai statues, all while trying to maintain some semblance of professional composure, is the kind of casting that makes you wonder why Hollywood hasn’t done this a dozen times already.
But the plot does thicken, because of course it does. Chris, the Malkovich half of the duo, gets tangled up with a couple of rebellious students who are clearly bad news for everyone involved. Their presence threatens to derail what was supposed to be a simple, quiet getaway - or at least a quiet cover story. Suddenly, the remote paradise isn’t so remote. The film’s official synopsis teases that this newfound bond “threatens to send everyone’s trip to this remote paradise sideways,” which is McDonagh-speak for “everything you think is going to happen, won’t, and everything that happens will be messier than you expected.”
Parker Posey is also on board as Marge, which means we’re getting that distinctly off-kilter energy in the supporting cast, too. Add in Tom Waits - because a McDonagh movie isn’t a McDonagh movie without a little gravel-voiced weirdness in the margins - plus Mariana di Girolamo, Paola Giannini, and Ailín Salas, and you’ve got a ensemble that feels equal parts indie darling and kitchen-sink chaos. The student characters are played by the latter three, and it’ll be interesting to see how McDonagh handles the political undercurrents of the era without turning the whole thing into a lecture. Given his track record, he’s more likely to use the political backdrop as a pressure cooker for personal drama rather than a history lesson.
This is McDonagh’s first feature since 2022’s The Banshees of Inisherin, which was a melancholy, beautifully shot meditation on friendship, ego, and self-destruction - albeit one where a guy kept cutting off his own fingers. Wild Horse Nine seems like a tonal pivot, leaning harder into genre play and, based on the “Comedy” tag, a more openly humorous register. That’s not to say it’ll be light. Chilean history around 1973 is about as heavy as it gets, and McDonagh has never been one to shy away from moral ugliness. But the comic potential is clearly there: two CIA agents out of their depth on a tiny island, surrounded by enormous stone faces that have seen empires rise and fall, trying to pull off an operation that feels increasingly doomed.
At 118 minutes, the run time suggests McDonagh is willing to let this thing breathe. Unlike some of his tighter efforts, this one has room to wander, which could be a blessing or a curse depending on how much you enjoy watching Malkovich and Rockwell trade barbs while the world around them crumbles. The film lands on November 4, 2026, and given its awards-season placement and the pedigree involved, expect this one to become a talking point for cinephiles and casual moviegoers alike.
There’s also a certain nostalgia baked into the premise. The idea of two veteran actors being dropped into an exotic locale with a script that’s mostly about their dynamic feels like a throwback to the buddy-picture era of the ’70s and ’80s, albeit filtered through McDonagh’s distinctly modern, postmodern sensibilities. Nobody writes dialogue quite like him - it’s simultaneously too clever for real life and too human for theater - and with Malkovich at his most Malkovichian and Rockwell at his most Rockwell-esque, the verbal sparring should be a masterclass.
We haven’t seen any early reviews yet, and the aggregated score is sitting at a pristine 0/10, which simply means nobody’s been allowed to see it before its release. But the ingredients are all here: a director with a razor-sharp voice, two leads who can do more with a raised eyebrow than most actors can with a monologue, and a setting that practically guarantees visual splendor. The only question is whether the whole thing will hang together or collapse into glorious, messy chaos. Knowing McDonagh, it’ll probably do a bit of both - and that’s exactly why we’re interested. Mark your calendars for November 4, 2026, and get ready to watch two legends try not to screw up paradise.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
