Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine Opens at 94% on Rotten Tomatoes

Searchlight Pictures released writer-director Martin McDonagh's fifth feature film, Wild Horse Nine, in US and UK theaters on Friday, 6 November 2026, after Thursday night previews on 5 November and a Gala Selection screening at the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival on 2 November. Set in September 1973 in Chile right before the US-backed military coup against President Salvador Allende, the R-rated, 118-minute dark comedy thriller stars John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as longtime CIA operatives sent from Santiago to Easter Island (Rapa Nui), alongside Steve Buscemi as their bureau chief.

Related reading: Nocturne Opens at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, Then Slips to 83% · Wildwood Opens at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes as Metacritic Stands at 87.

By 6 and 7 November 2026, Wild Horse Nine held a Certified Fresh 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes across 162 to 190 critic reviews, with an 8.2 out of 10 average critic score and a 92% Verified Audience rating. On Metacritic, the film stood at 77 to 78 out of 100 across 48 to 51 reviews. The release follows the film's 3 September 2026 world premiere in Main Competition at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, where Malkovich won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor on 12 September.

How the critic and audience scores break down

Across the opening weekend snapshots on 6 and 7 November 2026, the review aggregators logged near-universal approval for the lead actors and a narrower spread on the film's overall grade:

• Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 94% Certified Fresh across 162 critic reviews in the 7 November Wikipedia snapshot and 190 critic reviews on the live Rotten Tomatoes feed (179 Fresh, 11 Rotten).
• Rotten Tomatoes average critic rating: 8.2 out of 10.
• Rotten Tomatoes Verified Audience (Popcornmeter) score: 92%, with a 4.5 out of 5 average across more than 100 ratings.
• Metacritic Metascore: 78 out of 100 on 48 reviews in the earlier snapshot, and 77 out of 100 on 51 live critic reviews, marked "Generally Favorable".
• Metacritic review breakdown: 46 positive reviews (90%), 4 mixed reviews (8%), and 1 negative review (2%).

The Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus reads: "John Malkovich is at his cantankerous best in Wild Horse Nine, an uproariously funny espionage comedy with crackling dialogue and biting political commentary that practically bleeds from writer-director Martin McDonagh's pen."

Sixteen points separate the 94% Rotten Tomatoes approval rate from the 77 live average on Metacritic. The spread tells the story. Under a binary Fresh-or-Rotten system, nine out of ten critics recommend the film because the central comic performances and rapid-fire insults land cleanly. On weighted letter grades and five-star scales, the average settles into the high 70s because several reviewers who liked Malkovich's acting gave the script three stars out of five or a B-minus for its treatment of Chilean politics.

Two CIA men on Easter Island in September 1973

Wild Horse Nine opens in Santiago in September 1973, days before the coup against Salvador Allende. John Malkovich plays Chris Carlisle, a 72-year-old veteran CIA operative who has roughly a week left to live because of terminal cancer. He also has early dementia, frequent memory lapses, and a self-administered morphine habit. Sam Rockwell plays Lee Chesterfield, his younger CIA partner and protégé. Steve Buscemi plays MJ, the ruthless CIA bureau chief in Chile; Buscemi joined the cast in March 2025, replacing Mark Ruffalo.

The plot turns on a loose-lipped slip at the airport. Chris chats with Monica (Mariana di Girolamo), a left-leaning Chilean university student he befriends, and her travel companion Alicia (Ailín Salas). Chris casually tells the two women that he and Lee are CIA agents in Chile to destabilize their government. Chris and Lee then fly from Santiago to Easter Island, while Alicia is revealed to be a CIA mole planted by MJ.

Among the island's stone moai statues, Chris dictates a tape-recorder memoir of his mid-century CIA operations: "Guatemala, successful. Congo, successful. Bay of Pigs, less successful."

Chris had originally brought Lee to Easter Island to mercy-kill him at the end of the trip. Then he forgets the pact. He demands to fly to Venice instead. Back on the mainland, MJ kidnaps Lee's wife Marge (Parker Posey) and their children to force Lee to execute Chris and keep agency secrets from leaking. Tom Waits also appears as Chris's brother, Jim.

Why John Malkovich is carrying the awards conversation

Even critics who fault McDonagh's political framing treat the role as a major late-career turn for Malkovich. After winning Venice's Volpi Cup on 12 September 2026, Malkovich earned a nomination for Outstanding Lead Performance at the 2026 Gotham Independent Film Awards, scheduled for 30 November 2026. McDonagh received a Gotham nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

Daily newspaper and trade reviewers reached for high praise. In the San Francisco Chronicle, Mick LaSalle gave the film 4 out of 4 stars (100 on Metacritic) and wrote: "For sure, this performance is the crowning glory of Malkovich's career." Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph awarded 5 out of 5 stars (100) and wrote: "Watching this blood-thumping mordant comic thriller feels like catching up with the best film of 20 years ago that you somehow missed at the time." Collin added: "The film is downright wonderful, and Malkovich and Rockwell are irresistible in it."

"The real revelation is John Malkovich, a brilliant actor who can veer into self-caricature in lesser vehicles, here building infinite layers into a plum role that is his best in years, ranking with his finest work." David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter.

In Variety, Guy Lodge noted how often Malkovich has been miscast in recent years: "It's been a long time since we've seen this actor, too often squandered on rent-a-villain roles or Europudding ensemble duty, this engaged and affecting, in a part this perfectly tailored to his weary, wary onscreen demeanor." At RogerEbert.com, Matt Zoller Seitz scored the film at 3.5 out of 4 stars, calling it "The best acting ever done by Malkovich, Rockwell and Buscemi, and one wickedly quotable line after another."

In The Hollywood Reporter, David Rooney argued that Chris Carlisle's physical decline keeps Malkovich from falling back on familiar vocal tics. Dying, half-sedated on morphine, and losing his short-term memory, Chris lets his vanity collide with his confusion. In his 6 November review for The Ringer, Adam Nayman quoted Chris snapping at Lee: "Don't pull rank on me. I've killed people in countries you can't even spell."

Where the 1973 CIA satire divides reviewers

The critical split centers on whether McDonagh's farce has much to say about US intervention in Latin America beyond using 1973 Chile as a stage. Nayman called Wild Horse Nine in The Ringer "a victory lap" elevated by Malkovich even where its political messaging feels muddled.

In The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw gave the film 3 out of 5 stars: "Two men, some violence, much freewheeling chat: so far, so standard fare from the Oscar-winning writer-director. But this time the comedy and charm can feel diluted by blood and machismo." At IndieWire, David Ehrlich gave it a B-minus, calling it a "prickly but unconvincing" CIA satire while praising Malkovich as "more locked in than he's been on screen since 'Burn After Reading'" and "a joy to watch even when you don't buy a word he's saying."

Maybe that friction was unavoidable once McDonagh put his hitman-buddy rhythm inside real Cold War history. In a 6 November essay for The New Republic, Annie Berke compared the script to McDonagh's 2008 debut: "Wild Horse Nine, McDonagh's fifth and most recent feature film, is structured a lot like In Bruges. Both center on two men wandering through an exotic locale, largely unimpressed, frustrated by one another and consumed by regret. The order to kill or be killed forces one of them to choose between personal loyalty and professional duty."

In In Bruges, the pair were small-time contract killers hiding in Belgium. Moving that setup to September 1973 Chile changes the weight of the material, since Chris and Lee work for an agency backing the overthrow of an elected government. For Bradshaw and Ehrlich, the script uses regime change mostly as fodder for banter between two cynical Americans. For the 90% of Metacritic reviewers in the positive column, that self-absorption is the point.

How Wild Horse Nine fits into Martin McDonagh's five-film run

Wild Horse Nine is McDonagh's fifth feature as writer and director, after In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and The Banshees of Inisherin. He produced the film with Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, and Anita Overland through Blueprint Pictures, Film4 Productions, and TSG Entertainment for Searchlight Pictures.

Cinematographer Ben Davis shot the picture, Mikkel E. G. Nielsen edited the 118-minute US cut (117 minutes and rated 15 at the BBFC), and Carter Burwell wrote the score, which is nominated for Best Original Score at the 17th Hollywood Music in Media Awards on 18 November 2026. Production took place in Chile in March and April 2025 on Rapa Nui, at Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport, at a rayuela club in Conchalí, and in downtown Santiago.

Opening-weekend competition and what the early numbers do not show

Wild Horse Nine opened on 6 November 2026 into a busy early-November box office. Early tracking on The Numbers through Friday, 6 November stood at $905,214 following Thursday previews on 5 November.

That specialty launch ran alongside two wide releases opening the same weekend: Toho and GKIDS's Godzilla Minus Zero ($6 million to $6.7 million in previews) and Warner Bros. Pictures Animation's The Cat in the Hat, which opened at 45% to 46% on Rotten Tomatoes and 46 on Metacritic with $1 million in Thursday previews.

What to watch through late November

Three checkpoints follow. First is the completed three-day US and UK box-office total after Sunday, 8 November, along with any movement in the Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic averages as weekend reviews log. We will see how well a bleak 1973 political comedy holds screens once November tentpoles expand.

Second is the 17th Hollywood Music in Media Awards on 18 November 2026, where Carter Burwell is nominated for Best Original Score. Third is the 2026 Gotham Independent Film Awards on 30 November 2026, where John Malkovich is nominated for Outstanding Lead Performance and Martin McDonagh is nominated for Best Original Screenplay.

Cover image: John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell in Wild Horse Nine, photo by Diego Araya Corvalán, courtesy of Searchlight Pictures, via IndieWire.