Martin McDonagh has done it again. Wild Horse Nine, the writer-director’s fifth feature film, premiered in competition at the Venice Film Festival on September 3 to a thunderous 13-minute standing ovation that immediately set the awards-season conversation in motion. Distributed by Searchlight Pictures and set for release on November 6, the film stars John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as two CIA operatives on Easter Island in 1973, just before Augusto Pinochet’s coup, and arrives with an 87 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes from early reviews. The near-unanimous verdict is that McDonagh has delivered another strong film, while Malkovich may have finally found the role that could bring him his first Oscar.
Set in 1973 Santiago, Chile, shortly before the military coup that brought Pinochet to power, the film follows CIA officers Chris, played by Malkovich, and Lee, played by Rockwell. After helping facilitate the regime change, the two head to Easter Island for a combination of unspecified business and pleasure. Chris is a veteran intelligence operative who has helped destabilise multiple governments and may have had a role in the assassination of JFK. He is also secretly recording a memoir that threatens to expose everything he knows.
Chris is terminally ill with cancer, and his illness, combined with the knowledge that he has little left to lose, makes him increasingly dangerous. Lee, meanwhile, is dealing with frantic calls from his philandering wife Marge, played by Parker Posey, while their increasingly suspicious boss MJ, played by Steve Buscemi, heads to the island after Chris’s memoir entries begin leaking. The cast also includes Chilean actresses Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas as students Chris and Lee encounter, along with Tom Waits in a brief but affecting appearance as Chris’s estranged brother.
The film’s Venice premiere produced one of the festival’s most talked-about moments, with Malkovich visibly emotional as the standing ovation stretched to 13 minutes. McDonagh appeared touched by the response, while the cast joined the audience after the screening. The reaction quickly turned attention toward the film’s awards prospects, particularly for Malkovich.
Deadline’s Pete Hammond was among the most enthusiastic critics, calling Wild Horse Nine “easily one of the year’s best films” and describing it as the most spiritual of McDonagh’s work in its own peculiar way. He called the filmmaker “five for five” across his feature career, despite the difficulty of ranking a filmography that includes In Bruges, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Banshees of Inisherin. Hammond also praised Malkovich and Rockwell as “simply superb” and singled out Mariana di Girolamo’s performance for adding emotional weight to the film.
The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney viewed the film as another memorable addition to McDonagh’s body of work and described it as a late-career high for Malkovich. Rooney highlighted the actor’s ability to simultaneously conceal and reveal Chris’s emotions, creating an unusually thoughtful antihero. He also praised McDonagh’s ability to balance corrosive dark comedy with genuine poignancy, particularly as the film builds toward a bloody but lyrical climax.
NME was similarly positive, calling the film bitingly funny and bracingly tough while praising its performances. The review drew a connection to In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin, noting McDonagh’s talent for creating brilliant bickering between characters, while suggesting that Wild Horse Nine reaches toward something more cosmic and spiritual. Screen International also called the film potent and predicted awards attention.
The conversation around Malkovich’s performance has been the most consistent theme across the reviews. The actor has received two previous Academy Award nominations, for Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire, but has never won. Gold Derby suggested that he is likely to enter the Best Actor conversation during the coming awards season, while describing the performance as a late-career high. NME praised Malkovich’s ability to bring vulnerability to the caustic Chris, and Deadline called it a career performance and a role unlike anything he has previously played.
Rockwell, who previously won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, has also received strong notices. NME pointed to the possibility that his sharp, funny performance could follow a similar awards path, while Hammond praised him for anchoring the central relationship. Although Malkovich receives much of the film’s most memorable dialogue, Rockwell provides the quieter emotional grounding that keeps the story from becoming simply a dark comedy.
The supporting cast has received generally positive attention, although Parker Posey’s Marge and some of the other female characters have been viewed as underused. The Guardian, which gave the film three out of five stars, felt several of the women were underdeveloped compared with their potential.
The technical elements have also impressed critics. Ben Davis’s cinematography, his fourth collaboration with McDonagh, was praised for its visual strength, particularly the recurring images of roaming horses that carry symbolic significance. Carter Burwell’s score was also noted for complementing the film’s shifting tonal registers.
The main criticism concerns the film’s tonal shifts and some unresolved character threads. The Guardian found that its persistent violent flourishes do not always sit comfortably alongside its sentimentality and questioned the decision to leave certain elements of Lee’s family life unresolved. Variety was warmer overall but similarly noted that the movement between dark comedy and genuine emotional weight does not always land as cleanly as it does in The Banshees of Inisherin.
Still, the overall critical response places Wild Horse Nine firmly among the most significant films to emerge from Venice. It is another distinctive entry in McDonagh’s filmography, combining his trademark dark humour with a more reflective and spiritual streak. The biggest question now is whether Malkovich can turn the Venice enthusiasm into his first Academy Award win after two previous nominations. For now, the early consensus suggests that Wild Horse Nine has given him one of the strongest opportunities of his career.
Watch Wild Horse Nine Trailer:
Film Details: Wild Horse Nine
Director: Martin McDonagh
Writer: Martin McDonagh
Cast: John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, Parker Posey, Mariana di Girolamo, Ailín Salas, Tom Waits, Paola Giannini
Cinematography: Ben Davis
Music: Carter Burwell
Editor: Mikkel E.G. Nielsen
Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour 58 minutes
Producers: Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, Martin McDonagh, Anita Overland
Distributor: Searchlight Pictures
Festival: Venice Film Festival 2026 — Competition
Release Date: November 6, 2026
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