‘Wild Horse Nine’ Review: John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell Are a Perfectly Paired Double Act in Martin McDonagh’s Melancholy Seventies Caper
Variety | 04.09.2026 00:30
More often than not, a Martin McDonagh script sets out like the start of a joke. Two Irishmen meet in a pub, a hangman and a stranger meet in a pub, two hitmen go on holiday to Belgium, a man searches for his missing left hand, a woman purchases three billboards. McDonagh likes a well-told joke, and his films and plays are rife with them. But the scripts overall tend to swerve and sour before arriving at a punchline: His films, in particular, are frequently very funny, but they don’t tend to leave you laughing. So it proves again in “Wild Horse Nine,” starting with a joke opener practically patched together at random from other McDonagh loglines — two CIA agents go on holiday to Easter Island — and ending with a small lump in the throat.
