Wild Horse Nine opens in UK and Irish cinemas today, Wednesday 4 November, and the Wild Horse Nine UK opening turns a festival favourite into a public release two days before its US opening on Friday 6 November. Martin McDonagh’s black comedy spy thriller, starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, arrives with a strong critical consensus already behind it and a lead performance that several reviewers single out as career-best work.
What the UK reviews say
According to Comic Basics’ roundup, the film holds a 93 percent Tomatometer score from 120 reviews, with a 76 on Metacritic, indicating generally favourable reviews. Wikipedia’s updated reception section, retrieved November 4, put the figure slightly higher, at 94 percent from 129 reviews with an average rating of 8.2 out of 10, and a Metacritic score of 77 from 34 critics. The small difference reflects reviews still being added, not a dispute about the verdict: critics broadly like the film, even when they argue about its politics.
The Observer’s November 4 review called it a “maliciously funny moral maze” and praised Malkovich and Rockwell as a pair of jaded CIA agents in 1973 Santiago, dispatched to Easter Island shortly before the Chilean coup. Movieversalfilm’s UK review gave it 3.5 out of 5, calling it a “sour, funny and surprisingly tender buddy film” built around a towering Malkovich performance, while noting that McDonagh is working in familiar territory. Time Out awarded five stars, according to Comic Basics, while Empire gave four and The A.V. Club gave a B grade.
Why the UK date matters
The film premiered in competition at Venice on September 3, where Malkovich won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, and has since played Telluride, Toronto and the London Film Festival. It is rated 15 in the UK for very strong language, strong violence and drug misuse, and runs 118 minutes. For UK audiences, Wednesday’s opening is the first chance to judge whether the Malkovich-Rockwell double act lives up to the festival praise — and, with the US release following on Friday, whether that praise travels across the Atlantic intact.
