Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine opens in theaters on November 6, and it is a darkly funny road-trip-style caper about two CIA spies who cannot stop bickering. Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich star as Lee and Chris, two operatives who take a supposed break from work to visit Easter Island.

The premise will sound familiar to anyone who has seen In Bruges, the 2008 hitmen comedy that McDonagh wrote and directed. The reviewer admits the similarities are obvious, with hired guns on the lam and a lot of Catholic guilt. But McDonagh is not making the same film twice, and that is the twist that makes this one work.

The CIA duo are not hitmen on a holiday. They are spooks who need a reprieve from helping set up Augusto Pinochet’s coup in early ‘70s Chile, an operation aimed at overthrowing a democratically elected Marxist government. The trip to the island’s famous giant stone heads is supposed to be a breather from that dirty work.

The hard part is the tone. McDonagh takes on political violence and CIA-backed regime change, and he still delivers a movie that is genuinely funny. The reviewer argues he manages this without being insensitive to the real-world events swirling around his characters. Few filmmakers can keep a joke alive while the history behind it is this grim.

McDonagh’s greatest strength is still his dialogue. The writer-director is good behind the camera, but his writing is the reason to show up. The lines can be absurd, charming, mean and insightful, often all at once. The reviewer says they have been using a line from The Banshees of Inisherin, "You’re a nice guy, Pádraic," as a polite way to call people idiots for years.

The best scenes are built on small power struggles. Characters constantly jockey for a dominance that means almost nothing in the end, and that petty back-and-forth is what makes the banter stick. Some early jokes are set up with simple lines and paid off much later. The reviewer also notes that McDonagh did not spend the best lines in the trailer, so there is more to discover in the theater.

“I’ve killed people in countries you can’t even spell.”

That line comes from Chris, played by Malkovich, who keeps boasting about his past political assassinations. Lee, played by Rockwell, shuts him down with a jab about the country where Chris claims he once killed someone. The exchange shows the film’s style: a bragging veteran, a tired partner, and a joke that lands with a sting.

Rockwell and Malkovich carry the movie. Rockwell previously worked with McDonagh on Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, the film that helped earn him his Oscar. This time he plays Lee, a spy whose loyalty is pulled between his partner and his agency. Malkovich is the seasoned operative, Chris, who spent years on the ground during the CIA’s 1960s and 1970s meddling in other countries.

The reviewer compares their dynamic to a mix of Obi-Wan and Anakin, and also to Riggs and Murtaugh from the Lethal Weapon films. In this reading, Chris is both the grizzled veteran and the reckless maverick, while Lee is the eager apprentice facing choices he is not ready for. Whether Chris is ranting about why "gay countries make the best cheese" or teasing Lee about his wife’s infidelities, Malkovich gets most of the film’s best lines.

Steve Buscemi plays MJ, the head of the CIA’s South American operations, who decides Chris has become a real liability. Parker Posey is also hilarious as Lee’s wife, Margie, in a role the reviewer singles out for praise. The supporting cast gives the film its crowded, bickering energy.

Chris is not just a joke machine. He knows he is not going to live much longer, and like a flawed Catholic, he is looking for some kind of redemption before the end. He has said terrible things and done worse ones, and he insults nearly every character in the film. Malkovich still makes him compelling, and by the finish the reviewer says the audience is rooting for him.

The emotional anchor is Monica, played by Chilean actress Mariana di Girolamo. She is one of the young progressive women Chris insults at the airport. Despite being repulsed by him, they keep crossing paths on the island. Monica ends up pushing Chris to face his past and dig out whatever humanity he has left.

Compared with In Bruges, the reviewer says this film shows how much McDonagh has grown as a storyteller. Where the earlier movie kept its moral reckoning personal, Wild Horse Nine sets its story against real history. The lead-up to Pinochet’s coup gives the characters’ misadventures weight. It also asks American audiences to face the lasting consequences of their country’s political meddling.

The reviewer makes one more point that sums up the balance. It is hard for a film to make you laugh at two CIA agents arguing over which spouse would be the bigger security risk, a boozer or a heroin user, and then send you straight to Wikipedia to read about Patrice Lumumba. Wild Horse Nine does exactly that, making the absurdity of these men entertaining while never letting viewers forget the real damage their work caused.

Visually, cinematographer Ben Davis and McDonagh lean into a ‘70s look. Some shots are styled to appear as if they were filmed on Lee’s Super 8 camera, with the edges of the film stock visible in the frame. The establishing shots of the island’s moai are grainy and hypersaturated, and the reviewer calls them beautiful.

The reviewer does not find the camerawork especially flashy. The filmmakers take a restrained approach, letting the locations do most of the work, and they slowly add more close-ups as the characters grow more intimate. The reviewer says the framing never becomes distinctive enough to stand out on its own, though the film is still beautifully photographed.

Wild Horse Nine is a great hang, according to the reviewer. The script ranks among McDonagh’s best, and Rockwell and Malkovich give nuanced performances. The reviewer says these are men who have done awful things, yet they want to share a beer with them in a hotel lobby while they plot to overthrow a government. The reviewer adds that they already want to watch it again.