.png)
Two CIA agents are sent away from Santiago at one of the most unstable moments in Chilean history. Their destination is Easter Island, a remote landscape of monumental statues and limited escape routes. The distance from the capital does not free them from politics. It leaves them alone with secrets they have avoided confronting.
Written and directed by Martin McDonagh, Wild Horse Nine follows longtime partners Chris and Lee shortly before the Chilean coup of 1973. Their bureau chief, MJ, dispatches them from Santiago to the island, although the official synopsis has deliberately withheld the exact purpose of their assignment.
That missing information immediately gives the journey an uneasy quality. Chris and Lee are not simply travelling to a beautiful location. They are intelligence officers entering an isolated environment while carrying unresolved histories and becoming entangled in a conspiracy that neither may completely understand.
The mission on Easter Island
John Malkovich plays Chris, while Sam Rockwell portrays Lee. The two men have worked together for years, but experience does not necessarily produce trust. The official story description says both agents must face dark events from their past while dealing with conspiracies developing around them in the present.
Their assignment places them far from the political pressure building in Santiago. Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui, offers a completely different landscape: open ocean, ancient statues and communities separated from the institutions directing the agents’ lives.
The setting creates an important contradiction. It appears peaceful, but Chris and Lee have brought the instability of the outside world with them. Whatever orders they received in Santiago cannot prevent personal history from influencing how they interpret the people they meet.
The situation becomes more complicated when Chris develops a connection with two rebellious students.
Official information does not disclose why the students are on the island, what they are resisting or how they become involved with the agents. What has been confirmed is that Chris’s interest in them threatens to push the trip in an unexpected direction.
That relationship creates the story’s central question. Is Chris forming a genuine human connection, or is he allowing emotion to interfere with an intelligence operation? Lee must decide whether to trust his partner’s judgement while also determining what Chris may be hiding.
A partnership under pressure
Chris and Lee’s relationship should provide more tension than the physical mission itself.
They are described as longtime partners, meaning their conflict cannot be reduced to two strangers learning to cooperate. They already know one another’s habits and weaknesses. They may also know different versions of the same history.
When people have worked together for years, betrayal does not always begin with a dramatic act. It can start with information withheld, an order interpreted differently or a relationship that one person considers dangerous.
Chris’s bond with the students creates exactly that kind of uncertainty. Lee may believe that his partner is becoming careless. Chris may believe that Lee has stopped seeing the people around them as anything more than risks.
The conspiracy surrounding them could therefore become personal. Their greatest danger may not be identifying an enemy. It may be discovering that they no longer agree on who the enemy is.
Why the 1973 setting matters
The film takes place shortly before the military coup that overthrew Chilean President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. The coup ended Allende’s government and placed the country under military rule.
The United States Office of the Historian documents the political pressure, covert activity and deteriorating relationship between Washington and Allende’s government during this period.
Placing fictional CIA agents inside that history gives every order and conversation additional weight. Viewers will know that a major political rupture is approaching even if Chris and Lee do not understand how close it is.
However, the available synopsis does not reveal how their Easter Island mission connects to the real coup. The film should therefore not be presented as a factual account of CIA activity. Its characters and assignment belong to a fictional story unfolding against a real historical crisis.
The cast surrounding Chris and Lee
Steve Buscemi, Mariana Di Girolamo, Ailín Salas, Tom Waits and Parker Posey join Malkovich and Rockwell in the ensemble.
Buscemi’s presence is particularly interesting in a story involving a bureau chief and two agents whose mission is becoming unstable. Di Girolamo and Salas bring important Chilean and Latin American representation to a film set during a defining period in the region’s history.
McDonagh also reunites with several established collaborators. Carter Burwell composed the music, Ben Davis handled the cinematography and Mikkel E. G. Nielsen edited the film.
The Venice Film Festival lists the running time as 118 minutes. That gives the story enough space to develop its political atmosphere, the partnership between Chris and Lee and the growing importance of the two students without turning the film into a compressed history lesson.
What kind of experience should viewers expect?
The premise points toward a political thriller shaped by McDonagh’s taste for uneasy humour, damaged characters and conversations in which people reveal more than they intended.
Easter Island should provide more than attractive scenery. Its isolation can intensify every disagreement because the characters cannot easily leave one another behind. The statues also place these temporary visitors beside a history much older than their governments, assignments and private loyalties.
The film’s success will depend on how respectfully it uses Rapa Nui and Chilean history. The island cannot exist only as an exotic location for American characters, while the coup cannot serve merely as a convenient source of danger.
The strongest version of this story will allow the setting and Chilean characters to challenge the agents’ assumptions about the mission they were given.
Venice screening and release information
Wild Horse Nine is competing in the main Venezia 83 selection. Its first listed public Venice screening takes place on September 3, 2026, at 7:30 p.m. local time in the Sala Grande.
Searchlight’s official trailer introduces the characters and historical setting. An official Searchlight clip also lists November 6 as the theatrical release date, although availability may differ by country.
Flicklevel outlook
Wild Horse Nine has an unusually strong foundation: a remote location, a real political crisis and two intelligence officers whose shared history may be more dangerous than their assignment.
The central mystery is not simply what Chris and Lee have been sent to accomplish. It is whether either man still understands the person working beside him.
Chris’s connection with the students introduces a choice between professional obedience and personal responsibility. With Chile moving towards a coup, that choice could become impossible to postpone.
This is a spoiler-free story preview. A proper Flicklevel review should wait until the completed film has been watched.
Official source: Venice Film Festival – Wild Horse Nine