Wild Horse Nine opens in theaters today, and the conversation has already moved to awards season. Martin McDonagh’s latest film, distributed by Searchlight Pictures, has John Malkovich at its center. Critics are calling his lead performance his best shot at the Academy Award he has never collected.
Malkovich plays Chris Carlisle, a dying CIA agent stationed in Santiago, Chile in 1973, the year of the Pinochet coup. Sam Rockwell plays his partner, assigned to surveil and ultimately execute him. Steve Buscemi and Parker Posey round out the ensemble in what reviewers describe as vintage McDonagh: dark, funny, morally unresolved.
Malkovich has been nominated twice, both times in the supporting category: for Places in the Heart (1984) and In the Line of Fire (1993). He lost both times. Wild Horse Nine marks his first real contention in the lead race. Writing in Slate on November 5, Dana Stevens called him "a revelation in the kind of role he has too rarely gotten the chance to play over a 50-year career."
McDonagh himself arrives as a seven-time nominee. In Bruges, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and The Banshees of Inisherin all made serious runs at the ceremony. With Wild Horse Nine, he enters the 99th Oscar season already positioned as the director to beat.
The race will shift as more contenders open. But Wild Horse Nine is a rare opening-week frontrunner. Shortlists arrive December 15.
