Martin McDonagh: RANKED
With the release of Wild Horse Nine, I thought this would be the perfect time to celebrate one of my favorite writer-directors working today, Martin McDonagh.
I absolutely love this guy. I love his movies, his plays, his twisted sense of humor, and the fact that he can take some of the darkest, most depressing subjects imaginable and somehow turn them into something hilarious, heartbreaking, provocative and genuinely beautiful.
He's one of those rare filmmakers whose name in the credits immediately gets me excited, because I know I'm about to see something original, intelligent, challenging and probably filled with some of the most wonderfully creative profanity you'll ever hear.
Born in London in 1970 to Irish parents, McDonagh grew up with strong ties to County Galway, which would become the setting for much of his early theatrical work. His older brother, John Michael McDonagh, is also a talented filmmaker, responsible for movies like The Guard and Calvary.
Martin left school at 16 and began writing plays, developing a distinctive style that combined Irish storytelling traditions with absurdist comedy, sudden violence, moral ambiguity and dialogue so sharp it could draw blood. His characters are frequently lonely, angry, damaged people who say terrible things, do even worse things, and somehow manage to remain recognizably human.
McDonagh became a theatrical sensation during the 1990s with two trilogies set in County Galway. The Leenane Trilogy includes The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Skull in Connemara and The Lonesome West, while the Aran Islands Trilogy includes The Cripple of Inishmaan, The Lieutenant of Inishmore and the never-produced The Banshees of Inisheer.
His plays became enormously successful in London, Ireland and on Broadway, earning acclaim and occasionally horrifying audiences with their violence, language and willingness to explore uncomfortable subjects.
He later wrote The Pillowman, A Behanding in Spokane, Hangmen and A Very Very Very Dark Matter, establishing himself as one of the most distinctive playwrights of his generation.
And I have a personal connection to his theatrical work, because I actually directed a production of The Lonesome West in a small Chicago storefront theater many years ago.
Let me tell you something: directing Martin McDonagh is not easy. It's one of the most difficult plays I've ever directed. The material is dense, complicated, emotionally demanding and filled with dialogue that requires extraordinary precision.
Our production was okay. I'm not going to pretend it was the greatest production of The Lonesome West ever staged, because it certainly wasn't. But I was proud of what we accomplished, and working on that play gave me an even greater appreciation for the remarkable craftsmanship involved in his writing.
The rhythms, the pauses, the sudden shifts from comedy to tragedy, the way his characters can be absolutely monstrous one minute and devastatingly vulnerable the next, it's incredibly difficult material, but when it works, there's nothing quite like it.
And that's one of the things I admire most about McDonagh. He has an extraordinary understanding of Ireland, its people, its history and its darker cultural traditions. His work frequently examines violence, religion, guilt, loneliness, political conflict and the lasting consequences of historical trauma.
But he never approaches these subjects in a conventional way. He finds the absurdity in tragedy and the tragedy in absurdity. Even when his stories take place in America, there's something unmistakably Irish about their rhythms, their fatalism and their willingness to laugh directly in the face of death.
His stage and film work has earned him three Laurence Olivier Awards, five Tony nominations, six BAFTAs, two Golden Globes and an Academy Award. That Oscar came for his magnificent 2004 short Six Shooter, starring Brendan Gleeson as a grieving man who encounters a deeply disturbed passenger during a train journey.
It's dark, shocking, funny and genuinely moving, and it immediately demonstrated that McDonagh wasn't simply a playwright photographing his stage material. He understood cinema, with a wonderful visual sense, a terrific instinct for pacing and an ability to use the camera to enhance his writing.
Then came his feature debut, In Bruges, in 2008, and what an extraordinary debut it was.
Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play two Irish hitmen hiding out in the beautiful Belgian city of Bruges after a job goes horribly wrong, with Ralph Fiennes delivering a hilariously unhinged performance as their boss.
It's a brilliant mixture of crime thriller, black comedy and heartbreaking tragedy, filled with magnificent dialogue and unforgettable characters. Farrell is phenomenal, Gleeson is wonderful, and Fiennes is absolutely hilarious and terrifying.
The movie wasn't a major box-office hit when it was released, but it developed a passionate following through home video and cable television, eventually becoming a genuine cult classic. Today, many people consider it McDonagh's finest film, and I certainly understand why. It's one of the greatest feature directorial debuts of the 21st century.
He followed it with Seven Psychopaths in 2012, another wonderfully twisted crime comedy featuring an absolutely ridiculous cast, including Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Christopher Walken, Tom Waits, Abbie Cornish and Harry Dean Stanton. It's a movie about criminals, kidnapping, screenwriting, storytelling and the increasingly blurred line between fiction and reality.
It's probably the slightest of McDonagh's five features, but here's the thing: Martin McDonagh has never made a bad movie. Not one. Even his least successful film is filled with terrific performances, outrageous humor, memorable characters and wonderfully inventive writing. That's a pretty remarkable batting average.
One of the fascinating things about his filmmaking career is the company he keeps. Farrell, Gleeson, Rockwell, Harrelson and other extraordinary actors have returned to work with him, and he consistently gets some of their finest performances.
He's also maintained a wonderful creative relationship with composer Carter Burwell, best known for his magnificent scores for the Coen brothers. Burwell has scored all five of McDonagh's features, providing music that perfectly complements the melancholy, humor, violence and emotional complexity of these stories. His scores are sometimes beautiful, sometimes haunting and frequently heartbreaking.
In 2017, McDonagh delivered another masterpiece with Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, starring Frances McDormand as a grieving mother who rents three roadside billboards to demand answers about her daughter's unsolved rape and murder.
The film also features remarkable performances by Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, John Hawkes, Peter Dinklage and an outstanding supporting cast. It's an angry, tragic, frequently hilarious movie about grief, revenge, racism, guilt and the possibility of redemption.
McDormand won the Academy Award for Best Actress, Rockwell won Best Supporting Actor, and the film received seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.
It's one of my favorite movies of the past 20 years, and another example of McDonagh's extraordinary ability to find humanity in characters who are often behaving in completely unforgivable ways.
Then, in 2022, he returned to Ireland for The Banshees of Inisherin, which I consider one of his absolute masterpieces.
Set on a fictional island off the Irish coast during the Irish Civil War, the film stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as lifelong friends whose relationship suddenly ends when Gleeson's character decides he simply doesn't want to be friends anymore.
That seemingly simple premise develops into one of the funniest, saddest, strangest and most devastating movies I've ever seen. Kerry Condon is magnificent as Farrell's sister, Barry Keoghan is heartbreaking, and Gleeson gives one of the finest performances of his career.
But the heart and soul of the movie is Colin Farrell, who delivers what I believe is the greatest performance he's ever given. And that's saying something, because I think Farrell is one of the best actors working today.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again: The Banshees of Inisherin might be the most Irish movie ever made. Everything about it (the dialogue, the humor, the landscapes, the melancholy, the religious undertones, the symbolism and the Irish Civil War unfolding in the distance) is deeply connected to Ireland and its complicated history.
Ben Davis' cinematography is breathtaking, Burwell's score is heartbreaking, and McDonagh's screenplay is a masterpiece of tragicomic storytelling. It's a film about friendship, loneliness, pride, stubbornness and the terrible things people do to one another, sometimes for reasons they don't even fully understand.
The movie received nine Academy Award nominations and won absolutely nothing, which I still find infuriating. Most of the major awards went to Everything Everywhere All at Once, a movie I consider ridiculously overrated and nowhere near the artistic achievement of Banshees.
I love Jamie Lee Curtis, but Kerry Condon should have won Supporting Actress, and Colin Farrell deserved Best Actor over Brendan Fraser in The Whale. McDonagh should have been recognized for his screenplay and direction as well. Watching Banshees walk away empty-handed was one of the Academy's most frustrating recent decisions.
Which brings us to Wild Horse Nine, McDonagh's fifth feature, arriving in theaters this week.
Set against the political turmoil surrounding Chile in the 1970s, the film follows CIA operatives played by Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich as they travel to Easter Island and become involved in an increasingly dangerous situation.
With Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits and Parker Posey also appearing, it's another extraordinary collection of actors working with one of the most gifted writer-directors in the business.
Rockwell is tremendous, Malkovich is remarkable, and McDonagh once again explores violence, politics, mortality, guilt and the complicated relationships between deeply flawed people.
It's dark, funny, disturbing and unexpectedly moving, exactly the kind of movie I've come to expect from him. And once again, McDonagh proves that he can take subjects most filmmakers would approach with deadly seriousness and find something absurd, poetic and profoundly human within them.
I would love to see him finally win an Academy Award for one of his feature screenplays, and Wild Horse Nine certainly deserves consideration.
What ultimately makes McDonagh so special is his extraordinary writing and his remarkable ability to bring out the best in actors. His dialogue is practically musical, filled with savage insults, unexpected turns and some of the most creative profanity imaginable. He makes swearing sound like poetry.
And underneath all that outrageous language and shocking violence, he's exploring grief, guilt, loneliness, mortality and the desperate need for human connection.
His movies are beautifully photographed, expertly paced, darkly hilarious and frequently heartbreaking. He isn't afraid to make audiences uncomfortable, challenge their expectations or make them laugh at something they probably shouldn't be laughing at. I love that about him.
Martin McDonagh is one of the finest writer-directors working today, and I can't wait to see what he does next. He's made five feature films, and every single one of them is worth seeing.
A few are genuine masterpieces, and even the one I consider his weakest is still terrific. Ranking them wasn't easy, and depending on my mood, I could probably rearrange a couple of these on any given day. But that's the fun of making lists like this.
So, with Wild Horse Nine joining an already remarkable body of work, here are all five of Martin McDonagh's feature films, ranked in order of my personal preference.
MARTIN MCDONAGH'S FEATURES: RANKED (in order of my preference):
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