The incomparably salty and character-rich cast of Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine swept into Venice via water taxi Thursday to introduce the Oscar winner’s latest darkly literate comedy-drama.
John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi and Parker Posey were all on hand to banter about the new movie with the global media ahead of its world premiere later in the evening. The only supporting cast member missing — and sorely missed he was! — was the inimitable Tom Waits.
Backed by Searchlight Pictures, Wild Horse Nine is McDonagh’s follow-up to The Banshees of Inisherin, which won Venice’s best screenplay and best actor prizes in 2022 on the way to nabbing nine Oscar nominations.
Set shortly before the 1973 military coup in Chile, Wild Horse Nine stars Malkovich and Rockwell as Chris and Lee, longtime CIA partners stationed in Santiago who are dispatched to Easter Island by their bureau chief, MJ (Buscemi) to assist in the U.S.’s covert campaign to undermine the democratically elected Chilean government. Against the surreal backdrop of the island’s monumental Moai statues, the pair begin reckoning with their murky shared past.
McDonagh said he didn’t intend for the film to be a commentary on contemporary geopolitics, but that the project seems to have taken on a more timely resonance in the wake of the United States’ military action in Venezuela and the kidnapping of the country’s president Nicolás Maduro earlier this year.
