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# Wild Horse Nine (2026)
- URL: https://notnixon.com/wild-horse-nine-2026/
- Published: 2026-11-08T15:03:22.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-08T15:03:22.000Z
- Description: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½
- Author: Chris Sansbury
- Tags: Film Reviews

🎬

Director: Martin McDonagh  
Screenplay: Martin McDonagh  
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Crime  
Runtime: 1h 58m

> “Everything’s sad. That’s why I take so much smack.”

Imagine going to the cinema to see a movie more beautiful than 99% of movies you will ever watch, and when you get out of the theatre, all you can think about is the performances.

Wild Horse Nine sees Malkovich playing Chris Carlisle as a cruel arsehole you can’t help loving. That balance is the magic trick of his performance, one of the best of his career. Earlier this year I listened to him read Vonnegut’s *Breakfast of Champions*. Chris and the Kurt of that book feel like kindred spirits. Same cruelty, same sadness underneath.

The scene that sums up the movie for me is the one where Chris ribs Lee about the time his wife slept with a clown. It’s very funny, but also desperately bleak. Lee starts to defend her honour, then gives up, because the clown is the least of it. The joke and the resignation land together, and you can’t pull them apart. That’s McDonagh at his best.

I think Rockwell has the harder job in this film. It’s the consummate supporting role. His head shakes and his eyes roll in all the right places, which sets up Malkovich’s lines and keeps the audience on track. I probably laughed more with Lee than I did with Chris. He also plays Lee as a good man and a bad one, and the film doesn’t settle which until the final scene.

The high point, visually and metaphorically, is Chris’s call to his brother. I won’t spoil it, or the cameo. The old America set against the chaos of the new one, throwing its weight around the world with no morals to speak of. It's very chewable.

McDonagh is going over old ground here, but I don’t mind that at all. I love his films the way I love a comfortable sofa. The familiarity is part of the fun.

Again, I find myself watching a film about a man in decline in the same year I lost my dad. I saw him in both Chris and Lee. So my view of Wild Horse Nine might be coloured by that bundle of emotions. It made me laugh the whole way through, and it still hurt, but I can’t promise it will for you. Weigh the stars accordingly.