Director Martin McDonagh has an uncanny ability to make the most tragic and existential situations cathartically funny without feeling tacky or desperate for a joke. His previous film, the beautifully cathartic The Banshees of Inisherin, was as hilarious with its dark humor as it was somber, with its tragic characters struggling to process difficult feelings. Wild Horse Nine, by comparison, is far more comical than it is sad. The laughs are more abundant this time around, with characters that have grown more accepting of chapters in their life coming to an end. Rather than being terrified by existentialism, the difficult men of this film have accepted their fate and try to find some amusing comfort while there are still a few minutes on the clock.

The film begins in 1973 with the CIA readying an operation in Chile to destabilize the socialist government. However, CIA officers Chris Carlisle (John Malkovich) and Lee Chesterfield (Sam Rockwell) won’t be there to witness it. They’ve been dispatched to Easter Island for a much different mission. Chris, as it turns out, has terminal cancer and is not long for this world. Lee, who has looked up to this old-timer as a mentor, accompanies his old pal on what will be his final trip and the making of his memoir. The hot-headed CIA bureau chief, MJ (Steve Buscemi), wants to make sure that this dying man doesn’t spill out any secrets in his writings or conversations. It won’t be easy, given how lethargic Chris has become with the CIA lifestyle. After all, he’s dying! What does it matter if he blabs to some young folk about the coming Chilean coup d’etat?

It’s not like the rest of the CIA is mentally sound either. Lee is grappling with a cheating and paranoid wife (Parker Posey) many miles away, answering the phone expecting her lover and terrified of becoming a target of the CIA. MJ might seem like the hot-headed authority figure, but his drug addiction reveals just how pathetic he truly is when not barking orders. As they deal with their ongoing problems, Chris gets a chance to think about more than conspiracies and assassination targets. He lets all his inner voice spill out in earnest, unafraid to confess insightful thoughts about opposing authority and half-thoughts about horses. While he does confess some of his strange feelings to Lee, he takes a greater interest in the leftist college students Monica (Mariana di Girolamo) and Alicia (Ailín Salas). Maybe he can leave them with some wise words before departing this world, even if such knowledge places them in danger.

Even though there’s danger in revealing too many secrets and violent exchanges, there’s something rather comforting about how this odd movie progresses. McDonagh’s focus on a complex friendship between men remains his strongest quality, giving the film heart despite all the profanity-laced bickering. He keeps that relationship firmly in place, never losing sight of it amid the CIA’s scrutiny and the anti-authoritarian path Chris comes to recognize as the sanest way forward. It’s also a mesmerizingly shot film, embracing the natural wonder of Easter Island and creating colorful, serene locations where characters argue and shoot at each other. I particularly loved the scenes of Chris just getting lost amid the beauty of the place he’s certain he will die.

None of this would work, however, if the performances didn’t perfectly walk McDonagh’s fine line between the somber and the silly. John Malkovich is at his best here, especially for a role far too familiar that he could easily sleepwalk through this picture. He’s usually cast these days as the loudest conspiratorial voice in the room, but in this film he comes off as a man whose mind has started to clear as his health circles the drain. Malkovich brought remarkable charisma to a disillusioned agent more content to pontificate on security than to crank up the volume as a passionate orator. Sam Rockwell is also well utilized for his easy-going mannerisms as he tries to weather the toughest storms. His character endures, dealing with people he admires who have become extreme liabilities. His ability to endure the slings and arrows of his cheating wife and blabbing mentor makes Rockwell’s all-good demeanor more sweetly controlled than expected. It’s hilarious watching him try to quiet down Malkovich at the airport, treating his talkative nature about destabilizing Chile more like an offensive comment that needs a little defusing.

The laughs are higher in McDonagh’s film because of the ease the characters have with it. There are plenty of hilarious and revealing conversations, like when Chris shares his thoughts on cheese with the funny line, “You only have to taste American cheeses once to understand why we lost Vietnam.” Despite all the problems that are killing their body and minds, these aged men who have thrown away their lives have an acceptance of fate that finds them coasting on just getting through the day and possibly stumbling into redemption. From Chris composing absurd poems to MJ shooting himself up with drugs in an airplane bathroom, these are frustrated guys who have grown weary of their work and simply limp along to the next day. It’s a surreal point in their lives that the more humanizing moments of Chris and Lee arguing about the differences in Easter Island heads come off like hilarious breaks from the quiet struggles.

There are also some politically sound moments of clarity for Chris, such as when he becomes brutally honest about how bad the CIA can be when speaking with the college students. His fascination with these young travelers is unique, as he shifts from seeing them as starry-eyed leftists to hopeful inheritors of the future who deserve more truth than lies. And he doesn’t even dole out this information in some poetic form, going so far as to explicitly state which authority figures to murder.

Wild Horse Nine is an existential comedy of male friendships that is equal parts comfortingly cathartic and darkly hilarious. I expected fine performances from the always reliable Malkovich, Rockwell, and Buscemi, but I was surprised by how effortlessly they slipped into these offbeat roles as 1970s CIA operatives. There’s rarely a moment where it feels like they’re playing up their roles as satirical cartoon characters, nor are there pretentious poetics about coming to the end of the road. I knew I was in for a good time the way Malkovich was able to perfectly deliver an amusing line like “I’ve killed people in countries you can’t even spell.”