Martin McDonagh’s new film sends John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell to Easter Island before the 1973 Chilean coup. The mission sounds dangerous, but the friendship at its center may be the harder thing to survive.

A remote island seems like the perfect place to send two men who would rather leave their past behind. Unfortunately for Chris and Lee, they have to bring themselves along.

That is the hook of Wild Horse Nine, Martin McDonagh’s upcoming film starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as CIA agents dispatched from Santiago to Easter Island shortly before the 1973 Chilean coup. Their bureau chief, played by Steve Buscemi, sends them there while old secrets and conspiracies threaten their long partnership. Searchlight has set the theatrical release for November 6, 2026. Searchlight Pictures Press

The Assignment Is Only the Beginning

The setup could carry a straightforward spy thriller: agents receive orders, reach an unfamiliar place, and discover that the job is more dangerous than they were told. McDonagh has given it a more interesting pressure point. Chris and Lee already know each other, which means each man has years of reasons to trust the other and perhaps a few reasons not to.

A betrayal by a stranger would be easy to understand. Doubting someone who has stood beside you for years is messier. The film’s premise suggests that whatever happens on the island will test the partnership as much as the mission itself.

A Beautiful Place Cannot Erase the Setting

Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui, gives the film a striking backdrop, but the story takes place just before a defining rupture in Chile’s history. That timing should matter. It puts the agents’ private troubles beside events far bigger than either of them.

The risk for Wild Horse Nine is treating that history as an atmosphere for two Americans to have an argument. The more promising possibility is that the setting forces Chris and Lee to face what their work means beyond their own friendship. Searchlight’s synopsis also points to Chris forming a bond with two rebellious students, played by Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas. They could bring a perspective the agents cannot supply themselves, provided the film gives them room to be people rather than instruments of Chris’s reckoning. Searchlight Pictures Press

McDonagh’s Cast Is a Promise, Not the Point

Malkovich, Rockwell, and Buscemi are a tempting headline on their own. Add Tom Waits and Parker Posey to the cast, and it becomes easy to sell Wild Horse Nine as an event built around people you want to watch talk. McDonagh writes and directs, so expectations for sharp exchanges are fair. Searchlight Pictures Press

But a great cast can make a weak scene entertaining without making it meaningful. The test is whether the humor exposes something about these characters and their choices. If Chris and Lee can joke their way around everything, the historical setting will feel like decoration. If their wit starts to fail them, the film may find something much more uncomfortable beneath it.

The Real Question

Before its November release, Wild Horse Nine has the ingredients for a clever dark comedy: an isolated location, a strained friendship, political danger, and performers who can make a conversation feel like a fight. The stronger film will make those ingredients affect one another.

Chris and Lee can leave Santiago. They cannot outrun their history together, and they are arriving at a place with a history of its own. That is the story worth watching for.

— Sushi

For another political thriller, see our spoiler-free guide to Animals.