John Malkovich Gives the Performance of His Career in Martin McDonagh’s ‘Wild Horse Nine’ [Venice]

Let me just get it out of the way when it comes to Martin McDonagh: I don’t think he’s ever made a better film than “The Banshees of Inisherin,” which had surrealism etched into its story and was by far the most cinematic-looking film of his career. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still lots to like about “In Bruges” and “Seven Psychopaths” (I am not a fan of the wooden “Three Billboards”), but “Banshees” takes the cake for me.

That set aside, I mostly dug “Wild Horse Nine,” McDonagh’s latest film, which is getting good reviews — 79 on Metacritic — and is #2 or #3 in my ranking of his films.

The film made a major splash at the Venice Film Festival, earning a ridiculous 13-minute standing ovation after its premiere and immediately fueling Oscar buzz for John Malkovich — who is spectacular in this film. Malkovich, a two-time Oscar nominee, fought back tears while the audience cheered him, which has become a first-stop tradition to kick-start an Oscar campaign — tears need to be shed!

Malkovich is the major standout in “Wild Horse Nine,” playing Chris, a terminally ill, dementia-ridden CIA agent confronting the evil deeds of his past who, much to the dismay of his colleagues, threatens to write his memoirs — he pronounces it “memwahs,” much like the character he memorably played in “Burn After Reading.”

Set in Chile in 1973, as the country heads toward Pinochet’s takeover, the film follows Malkovich’s Chris and fellow agent Lee (Sam Rockwell), two spies whose job is perpetrating regime change all around the world. They are coup experts. It’s also hinted that Chris might be responsible for one of the 20th century’s greatest conspiracy theories, the JFK assassination — he might or might not have pulled the trigger on the 35th president.

What you get in this film are the familiar McDonagh themes of crime, guilt and redemption, but Malkovich gives them real depth. His Chris is weary and ashamed of his past, but also proud of how effectively he carried out his work. Malkovich can communicate more with a barely audible grumble than other actors can with pages of dialogue — it might be the performance of his career.

The ‘70s-soaked cinematography by Rapa Nui is beautiful, and it really helps since this film is essentially a dark buddy comedy, driven by spiky dialogue, in the same vein as McDonagh’s “In Bruges”: two characters consistently at odds with each other yet simultaneously bromancing.

Malkovich brings an easygoing, almost cowboy-like charm to the character, even as Chris casually talks about killing 68 people and jokes that Lee “only” killed 8. His chemistry with Rockwell — his usual great self — also gives the film an odd-couple energy, with Chris’ increasingly erratic behavior contrasting against Lee’s more grounded presence.

However, beneath Chris’ swagger, Malkovich reveals a man coming apart. While vacationing with Lee on Easter Island, Chris begins losing more of his memory and asks Lee to kill him off as a favor. Malkovich plays that decline with a mix of guilt, paranoia and dark humor. He shifts effortlessly from joking about cheeses to worrying that he has explosives hidden in his luggage or checking reminder notes in his pockets, à la “Memento” — “don’t trust Lee!” one of them says.

McDonagh clearly wrote this script for character actors. It’s a much smaller film than his last two, a buddy comedy inside a political thriller — hell, even Steve Buscemi shows up, in a handful of scene-stealing scenes, as Chris and Lee’s heroin-addicted CIA boss.

However, it’s Malkovich’s performance that gives “Wild Horse Nine” much of its emotional weight. After decades of great work, including scene-stealing turns in “Dangerous Liaisons,” “In the Line of Fire,” “Empire of the Sun,” “The Killing Fields,” “Of Mice and Men,” and, of course, “Being John Malkovich,” it’s very hard to imagine Malkovich not getting Oscar-nominated for his work here — he may even finally win.