Sam Rockwell’s Spy Thriller Earns Top 2026 Reviews, and the Freqs Have Been Here Before

According to Collider, Sam Rockwell’s Wild Horse Nine is hitting theaters after a Venice International Film Festival debut that earned a 13-minute standing ovation. The darkly comedic spy thriller, directed by Martin McDonagh, places Rockwell and John Malkovich as CIA agents sent to Easter Island in 1973, shortly before the coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende in Chile. Collider reports the film sits at a 94% Certified Fresh Rotten Tomatoes score from 136 reviews, and it opens in theaters this Friday.

The Rockwell Pattern Parallel Frequencies Keeps Finding

Long before this week’s headlines, there was Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, and it is the kind of Rockwell performance that rewards a second look. The character walks into a diner claiming he has lived the same moment 117 times, and the question the hosts keep returning to is whether he is unhinged or right.

On the episode, Just Blane and Coco treat that tension as the engine of the whole film. Blane points to how the story keeps Rockwell’s character sitting on the line between dismissal and belief, which is exactly where a good Rockwell role lives. Coco brings the gendered risk instinct into the conversation, pointing out how differently a stranger’s warning lands depending on who is delivering it. Their take is that the film’s dark satire, from ad-supported clones to synchronized students, works because it makes the audience laugh at horrors that are closer to home than they want to admit.

The episode also gets into the grief storyline and the question of what technology promises people who are hurting, a thread that gives the film its emotional weight beneath the jokes.

If you have only seen the trailers or the headlines, this conversation gives you the argument behind the film, not just the premise. Give it a listen and decide where you land.

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