Writer/director Martin McDonagh’s latest is again about friendship, but there’s much more going on here, and it’s as political as his most celebrated (if perhaps problematic) outing Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
Back in 1973, a pair of CIA officers and pro assassins have finished helping set up the coup d’etat that would violently end Salvador Allende’s Marxist government (on the other September 11th). They’ve been sent to Rapa Nui (or Easter Island) by unreliable boss MJ (Steve Buscemi) so that Chris (John Malkovich) can see “the big heads”, and it becomes increasingly clear why, and exactly what role Lee (Sam Rockwell) will be playing.
Rockwell won the Best Supporting Oscar for Billboards, and he’s wonderful here, and yet the major surprise is Malkovich, who’s tended towards small roles and much hamming in recent years. His Chris, a multi-murderer with an existential outlook, a morphine addiction, and a wandering mind, is another of McDonagh’s complex creations, as he casually reveals long-buried CIA secrets with a gentle smile.
There are other characters, including Parker Posey as Lee’s loud wife in a few scenes, and yet the two leads are the chief focus in much the same way that Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson were in McDonagh’s In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin. Their darkly funny, sometimes achingly sad scenes are handled with expert understatement, and it’s easy to forget what truly awful people they are.
But make no mistake: this witty dialogue and cutting humour doesn’t disguise the fact that this is actually all about America, and how 1973 might seem a long time ago, but it sure as Hell is not.
(4 out of 5)
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