Rockwell/Malkovich play great duet

  If you see the trailer for Wild Horse Nine, the new movie teaming John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, you may think that you’re in for another comedy about a couple of wise-ass characters.

 But if you notice that the movie has been directed by Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin, In Bruges, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), you’ll put yourself in the right frame of mind for an unlikely but engaging mixture of dark comedy, political cynicism, and sentiment focused on a couple of CIA assassins.

   Perfectly paired, Rockwell and Malkovich play a finely calibrated duet. Malkovich portrays Chris Carlisle, a veteran CIA agent who has taken part in many operations, including the Congo, Indonesia, and the Bay of Pigs. 

   Chris is a mysterious figure who can be both off-putting and sympathetic; he’s marked by sadness and a disease-induced loss of memory, and Malkovich delivers what qualifies as one his best big-screen performance. Fresh and funny, Malkovich gives life to one his memorable characters. 

   Younger and less experienced, Rockwell’s Lee Chesterfield tries to curb Chris’ uncontrolled instincts. Chesterfield? Sounds like a character from a Masterpiece Theatre series or maybe he was named for a once-popular brand of American cigarettes. He's an avid eater.

    Lee takes the terminally ill Chris on a final trip to Easter Island. Chris has always wanted to see the island's giant heads, but from the outset, it's clear these guys aren't tourists. Political issues color McDonagh’s unconventional character study, threatening to emerge like a bitter aftertaste.

   Both men work for MJ (Steve Buscemi in another rich role), the head of CIA operations in Latin America. The movie takes place in 1973, just before the overthrow of Allende’s leftist government in Chile. Chris and Lee have been working to destabilize the country, tilling the soil for an emerging right-wing Pinochet government.

   An airport encounter with two women (Mariana di Girolama and Ailin Salas) establishes Chris as a sarcastic flirt who talks too much. The two women will reappear on Easter Island, where we learn that Chris might be working on a memoir that could embarrass the CIA with a bombshell disclosure.

   When things get hairy on Easter Island, McDonagh introduces Lee’s stateside wife Marge, a terrifically perturbed Parker Posey, who, in a phone call with Lee, puts an indelible stamp on the role of a woman who gives as good as she gets.

   Tom Waits makes an impressive brief appearance as Chris’s estranged brother, a hermit songwriter who lives in a cabin from which he can view Monument Valley. 

    You'll also see the Rapa Nui coastline with the giant heads, which become a source of mystery and comedy, aided by another strong Carter Burwell score.

   McDonagh’s script finds ways to make fun of wokeness and inefficient spying. He even includes a monologue in which Chris tells Lee which countries should be regarded as gay (England, France, Holland, and Switzerland). Gay countries, he insists, are known for fine cheeses, an absurd correlation that puts Malkovich and Rockwell on the edge of a silly comic routine.

    But McDonagh’s dialogue also can be deadly serious. At one point, Chris says that protest marches are fine but history moves through murder, the elimination of those who oppose one's interests, a chilling assertion if you think about it. And you should. 

   True to his tendency to shift tones, McDonagh takes a lyrical approach to the wild horses of Easter Island, using one in particular to connect with Chris. Could this friendly horse and Lee be part of a vanishing breed, something like the cowboys of the Old West — or of Old Westerns?

  All of this is leavened by Chris’s keen awareness of his mortality, which becomes the movie’s awareness, as well. A Catholic by faith, he seems to be serious when he wonders whether his chances of getting into heaven as a CIA assassin might be better than those of a loathsome Nazi who had nonetheless performed one worthy act.  

   McDonagh manages the movie’s tonal variations without much strain and pushes the plot in unexpected directions, fulfilling genre obligations while also cleverly playing with them. Not an easy task.

    Fair to call Wild Horse Nine a dark comedy about characters who might be more than a few ticks beyond redemption but get to us anyway. They may be hitmen, but they're a couple of classics.