Martin McDonagh has enjoyed an impeccable career for nearly 25 years, writing and directing critical (and often commercial) successes In Bruges; Seven Psychopaths; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; and The Banshees of Inisherin. Even his 2004 debut short film, Six Shooter, won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Film. He’s Hollywood’s token Irishman, a seriocomic filmmaker who, consciously or not, perpetuates familiar reductive stereotypes about Ireland and Irish people. No wonder he’s beloved over here—Hollywood always needs controlled opposition and flattering servants who are too overwhelmed by the glare to challenge the status quo, if they’re able or interested in doing that in the first place.
McDonagh’s schtick has remained consistent over the past two decades—he’s essentially a “classier” version of Guy Ritchie, “more presentable,” with much less violence and slightly more literate characters (and the thick accents that do show up simply aren’t as challenging as those in Ritchie’s films, or the “Nadsat” slang of A Clockwork Orange). Dirty words, spoken by compromised people, “problematic people,” all celebrated by Hollywood because none of them are American… he may be routinely censored in Europe, but they have a pretty low tolerance for uppity white men at the moment, so I’m surprised he hasn’t been censured more. Three Billboards caught some flack in the American press upon its release in the fall of 2017, simply because #MeToo was just beginning and Donald Trump was still a fresh President, but Frances McDormand went on to win an Oscar for her performance in the film; she ended her acceptance speech by shouting “INCLUSION RIDER! INCLUSION RIDER!” Politicking with a little gold man in her hand—nothing new, and always boring.
McDonagh’s “blue streak” is constantly overstated. He doesn’t write offensive or provocative material, he just uses the seven dirty words a lot. It’s a crutch, and he’s leaned on it for too long now—the strain shows in Wild Horse Nine, out now and improbably making money (how the hell did Christian Mungiu’s excellent Fjord get swept under the rug after winning the Palme d’Or in May?), is McDonagh’s worst film yet, and while it’s partially his fault, the biggest problem with the film is something that was unavoidable: John Malkovich’s voice. Wild Horse Nine mostly follows two CIA agents in 1973: Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. They’re in every scene. Remember, McDonagh’s dialogue is very written and stylized. This was fine in all of his previous films. It’s fine when Rockwell or Steve Buscemi are talking.
But Malkovich has a speech impediment that’s impossible to ignore. He hasn’t addressed it publicly, and it’s a relatively recent development: his December 2025 appearance on Club Random with Bill Maher alarmed many people, and I noticed the problem in a video he made for GQ about some of the films he’s made. Malkovich sounds like he either had a stroke or some operation that left him slurring his words, often unable to rise above a monotone growl; it doesn’t sound like he’s intoxicated, and to be fair, he does break out of it while screaming in one scene in Wild Horse Nine. His character may be dying of dementia and addicted to heroin in the film, but it’s obvious this isn’t a put-on voice (like Rounders) but a real situation that may or may not be serious, one which the public knows nothing about.
Wild Horse Nine is a non-starter. It’s essentially a two-hander and one of them is misfiring. It’s hard to watch, but probably would’ve been tolerable if the movie itself were any good. Instead, McDonagh rehashes some familiar “safe edgy” material that probably scans as provocative to Academy voters and basically no one else: see riffs about “gay countries making the best cheeses,” “assassinated white presidents are remembered more often than assassinated black presidents,” and the ridiculousness of the word “indigenous” and how seriously some people (idiots) take it. Rockwell, who’s always great, doesn’t have much to do, and he can’t save the movie. He’s Malkovich’s sounding board, and you can almost see him encouraging his scene partner to make it to the end of the line. Not a movie for a Sunday Funday.
On top of that, Wild Horse Nine is curiously empty, even unfinished. Where’s the underscoring? Where’s the score? Like so many contemporary films, Wild Horse Nine has almost no music or sound design to speak of. This doesn’t make the film more realistic or “serious,” it just makes it look unfinished. Ditto the artless cinematography, no different than the soulless drone job done on a movie like The Devil Wears Prada 2. And while the film has pretenses to political significance, it doesn’t have the courage to address the 2020s, going where so many other timid filmmakers have ended up recently: back in time, to 1973, with plenty of secondhand references to Charles Manson and a couple of obvious and strained cues lifted whole cloth from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Quentin Tarantino’s grand masterpiece has cast a shadow over pandemic ravaged 2020s filmmaking, but just like wannabe Nirvana and Beatles imitators, no one has come close to achieving what Tarantino did in his most recent film. McDonagh, while not a hack, is a prefab writer-director whose schtick might be exhausted.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @NARCFILM