Martin McDonagh's "Wild Horse Nine" Opens Today, and Its First Major Review Says John Malkovich Is as Good as He's Ever Been

Underneath this weekend's monster-versus-cat fight, the season's prestige slate adds a serious entry today. Wild Horse Nine, written and directed by Martin McDonagh, opens in theaters Friday with the strangest logline on the marquee: two CIA operatives in Santiago in 1973, taking a break from helping to set up the fall of Salvador Allende's government, go on vacation to Easter Island together. Goodykoontz, in the first major review this desk has verified, calls it "essentially a sweet buddy comedy" built on that setup — funnier than it has any right to be, and carried by its two leads. He gave it four stars.

Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA partners — one claims 68 kills, the other has eight

John Malkovich plays Chris; Sam Rockwell plays Lee. Chris is in his 70s, has been killing people for the agency for decades — he claims 68 kills, the review notes, "and there is no reason not to believe him" — and is dying of incurable cancer, his memory and his discretion going together. Lee, his protégé, is a relative beginner at eight kills, and is being asked by his mentor to help him go out on his own terms. Steve Buscemi plays MJ, their bureau chief, who has his own reasons to visit: Chris is threatening to write a memoir while his memory still holds. Parker Posey plays Lee's wife, and Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas play the two college students Chris cheerfully tells not to get attached to Allende.

Goodykoontz is precise about where the film's strengths and limits sit: the performances outshine the story, In Bruges remains the superior McDonagh film about killers on holiday, and none of that stops this one working. His verdict on the centre of it is the line the season will quote: Malkovich "steals the movie," his Chris "so compelling… it's hard not to" root for him — "He's as good as he's ever been." Rockwell, "hiding behind a cowboy mustache and a sense of exasperation," carries the heartbreak half of the double act. The review also notes what the film doesn't do: it doesn't tackle American intervention head-on, and readers will divide on whether that's restraint or evasion — Goodykoontz, for the record, doesn't call it a cop-out.

Why a November opening puts this film in the awards-season conversation

This desk tracks December more than it reviews, so here's the December relevance, stated plainly: a McDonagh film opening in November with a career-peak notice for a beloved actor is an awards-season object by construction, whatever its box office does in a limited theatrical footprint (rated R, for pervasive language, some strong violence, drug use and sexual references). The season's calendar piece below maps where it lands. And a methodological note in our house style: this piece rests on one major review, opened in full and attributed throughout, because that's what exists and verifies today. When the wider critical consensus publishes, the desk will file the follow-up with the range — the way the Godzilla piece in this run prints three forecasts instead of pretending they agree.