Parker Posey and Steve Buscemi on Wild Horse Nine

Two luminaries of US indie cinema sit down to discuss their roles in Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy caper, democracy in peril and weeping openly at mass on a south Pacific island

At the centre of the gunslinging black comedy Wild Horse Nine is an old married couple according to director Martin McDonagh: CIA operatives Lee (Sam Rockwell) and Chris (John Malkovich). Trying to tear them apart is Lee’s actual wife, Marge (a needling Parker Posey), and the pair’s control-freak boss, bureau chief MJ (Steve Buscemi). On the cusp of the 1973 Chilean coup, the two agents take a trip to Easter Island – where old-timer Chris has requested that he live out his final days, if Venice doesn’t work out.  

It’s a happy coincidence, then, that the film screened in competition at Venice Film Festival, where Buscemi and McDonagh also first discussed a potential collaboration in 2022. “I had met him a couple of times, but I got to know him when he was here with Banshees [of Inisherin],” says Buscemi, when I speak with him and Posey before the premiere in the resplendent gothic Hotel Danieli. “When I read that in the script I was like, ‘Do you know this film is going to come to Venice?’”

Aside from its central bromance, Wild Horse Nine is primarily about reckoning with guilt. With the spiritual backdrop of Easter Island’s ancient moai, Chris, a lapsed Catholic, is forced to reflect on a career of bloodshed, presidential assassinations and American meddling with foreign democracies, not least the currently unfolding crisis in Chile. There are flavours of McDonagh’s previous films: the masculine brooding of In Bruges and Banshees, and the propulsive shoot-outs of Seven Psychopaths.

A Catholic upbringing is one thing that unites McDonagh, Buscemi and Posey. “I went to Catholic school first, second and third grade, but it marked me for life,” claims Buscemi, explaining that the theme wasn’t what drew him to the role. “It’s always the relationships, how they’re drawn, how people relate to each other, what’s going on underneath.”

“I did get to go to mass on the final Sunday at Easter Island,” Posey interjects, describing the service as a combination of indigenous and Catholic traditions. “Venus was in the sky. [It’s a] really bright star at that time of the year [...] The way they were singing brought me to tears because it was so from the gut, and I just started crying. Did you want to hear how it sounded? People are going to start running. Now I’m embarrassed to do it, but I’m going to do it” – at which point Posey cries out an indescribable sound. “If [only] I could go back to my child self who wanted an adventurous life and then go like, ‘Oh my God, I actually got to see something like this.’”

Most of McDonagh’s characters have a reason to want Chris dead. Acting out most of their scenes on the other end of the phone line (shot in real time), Buscemi and Posey vie for Lee’s attention. Playing Lee’s unfaithful wife reminded Posey of her shoot on Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid, where she was also holding the phone receiver. As in theatre waiting backstage, her job was to “fill in all the colours, get as much information as [one] can to slide in there and hit the right notes.” Her and Rockwell acted as sparring partners: “Couples become one kind of entity of humour [...] It was a lot [of] smoking and screaming.”

“[McDonagh is] Americana, but he’s also Irish,” she continues, recalling how McDonagh would push her to “twist the knife”. “Irish people are, like, really tough. I feel there’s this toughness that [Martin] likes to write.” But beneath all the characters is an unexpected, undeniable softness. As Buscemi observes, “You can’t be hurt by someone that you don’t love.”

Meanwhile, Buscemi was reuniting with his villainous co-star from Con Air for the first time in nearly 30 years. “In this movie, [Malkovich] won’t even give me the time of day,” he chuckles. “He has such disdain for me, but in Con Air, one of my favourite moments is [when I] take off my Hannibal Lecter mask and John says to me, as his character talking to mine, ‘I love your work.’” He jokes wishfully: “No, that’s John saying that to Steve. So this relationship was quite different.”

Both Rockwell and Malkovich have been tipped as major contenders in the Oscars race. Malkovich as Chris is a revelation, cold-blooded and nihilistic on the outside but warm, fuzzy and hopeful within. “I thought this character was so different [...] from a lot of the stuff that he’s done and yet it’s so him,” says Buscemi. “You go, ‘Wow, this is the performance we’ve been waiting for’ from him, even though he’s done so many amazing things.”

McDonagh’s film is timely, arriving in the wake of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s abduction by the US. On the Trump administration, Buscemi says, “I don’t even want to get into it because it’s just so frustrating […] And to see that this stuff has happened before, and it can happen, and it’s happening now. And if we don’t learn from it, it will keep happening. And democracy is fragile. And we shouldn’t take anything for granted.”

Finally, I ask, what’s the meaning behind Wild Horse Nine’s title? “I can't help you there,” says Buscemi earnestly. “I’m still trying to figure out what Reservoir Dogs means.”

Wild Horse Nine is out now in UK cinemas