'Wild Horse Nine': A CIA Comedy That Aims for ‘Banshees’ but Misses the Mark

Rating: ★★★☆☆

There is an undeniable audacity in attempting to wring belly laughs from the darkest chapters of American foreign policy. Wild Horse Nine, the darkly comic geopolitical thriller hitting cinemas this week, walks a razor-thin tonal tightrope, balancing slapstick banter against the grim reality of US-backed South American coups. The result is a film that is frequently hilarious, occasionally brilliant, but ultimately hindered by its own desperate need to be profound. It is a solid three-star endeavour that earns its keep through sheer acting calibre, even when the script stumbles under the weight of its own ambition.

The story takes place shortly before the 1973 Chilean coup, CIA agents Chris (John Malkovich) and Lee (Sam Rockwell) are dispatched from Santiago to Easter island by their bureau chief, MJ (Steve Buscemi). Amongst the Island's iconic statues, and as the longtime partners wrestle with their dark pasts and present conspiracies, Chris's newfound bond with a pair of rebellious students (Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas) threatens to send everyone's trip to this remote paradise sideways.

From the opening frames, it is glaringly obvious what cinematic territory Wild Horse Nine is trying to occupy. The film strains, sometimes violently, to evoke the melancholic, existential tragicomedy of Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin. But where McDonagh’s masterpiece felt organically rooted in the bleak, wind-swept despair of its isolated characters, the existential dread here feels entirely forced bu McDonagh's script. The script practically begs the audience to notice its cleverness, grafting a quirky, macabre sensibility onto the cigarette smoke, tan landscape of 1970s CIA interventionism. 

Fortunately, whatever the script lacks in organic tonality, the two lead actors more than make up for in execution. The performances are, without exaggeration, brilliant. Playing the lead—a world-weary, terminally ill CIA operative on his final, off-the-books assignment—John Malkovich delivers a masterclass in quiet devastation. He is dying, and he knows it, moving through the film with the heavy, slumped posture of a man who has seen too much and regrets almost all of it. His eyes convey a lifetime of moral compromises, and he numbs both the physical and mental pain with morphine. His dynamic with his younger, idealistic co-star Sam Rockwell creates a magnetic friction that anchors the entire narrative. Together, they elevate the material, transforming what could have been a clunky buddy-comedy into a poignant exploration of complicity.

And then, of course, there is Steve Buscemi. Playing the duo's slimy, bureaucratic handler, Buscemi is a master at these kinds of roles. He portrays the kind of middle-management CIA boss who views the destabilization of foreign governments not as a grand ideological crusade, but as a tedious logistical headache involving expense reports and missed tee times. He is the personification of the banality of evil, wrapped in a cheap polyester suit.

This brings us to the most perplexing, yet effective, aspect of Wild Horse Nine: the comedy itself. There are, without a doubt, a lot of laughs in this film. The dialogue is sharp, the physical comedy is surprisingly adroit, and the comic timing of the two leads is impeccable. Yet, nearly every chuckle is immediately followed by a sharp pang of guilt. There is a profound, creeping sense that we really shouldn't be laughing at any of this. The backdrop to these witty repartees and bumbling misadventures is the systematic orchestration of South American coups by the CIA—a legacy of genuine historical trauma, torture, and regime change. The script mines humour from the sheer callousness of the American operatives, but the laughter often catches in the throat. Are we satirizing the horror, or merely making light of it? The film never quite figures out the answer, leaving the audience to navigate a deeply uncomfortable moral grey area.

In a bold, perhaps ill-advised move, the script is peppered with humorous, off-hand references to the assassination of John F. Kennedy and a conspicuously "missing" rifle. These jokes are deployed with a flippant, insider casualness by the agents, treating one of the great American tragedies as a morbid company inside joke. It is shocking, bleakly funny, and perfectly encapsulates the insular, morally bankrupt world these characters inhabit.

In the end, Wild Horse Nine is a film at war with itself. Martin McDonagh's script wants to be a profound meditation on mortality and the sins of empire, while simultaneously trying to be a comedic view of the CIA. It doesn’t entirely succeed at either, primarily because its attempts to channel The Banshees of Inisherin feel artificially pasted onto the narrative. Yet, despite its glaring flaws, the film remains remarkably watchable. Easter Island looks gorgeouas and the laughs, however guilty they make you feel, are genuinely funny, and the performances—particularly the dying, world-weary Malkovich, Rckwell's paranoia and Buscemi’s delightfully slimy boss—are worth the price of admission alone. It is a bumpy, imperfect ride, but one that manages to find a strange, morbid entertainment in the darkest corners of history.

Oh, and Tom Waits has a cameo too!

Copyright Denise Breen 2026