Every Martin McDonagh-Directed Movie, Ranked (Including Wild Horse Nine)

British-Irish filmmaker Martin McDonagh has become one of cinema's foremost stewards of the tragicomedy. In a McDonagh movie, violence or death can be hilarious, or devastating, or both. He forces us to sympathize with unlikable or even evil characters by showing that even those bad eggs still have human sides. Catholicism casts its shadow over McDonagh's stories, especially in how he loves to focus on guilty, even suicidally guilty, people. He dares you to sympathize with those guilty people in spite of their horrible sins and, quite often, he succeeds.

While there are usually glimmers of hope for redemption, McDonagh's stories never end with tidy answers, either. As for his crackling dialogue, it's remarkable how adept he is at both non-sequiturs and rhythmic back-and-forth. If Quentin Tarantino had been raised in London and Galway instead of Tennessee and Los Angeles, you'd have a writer like Martin McDonagh.

McDonagh began as a playwright, producing several plays in the 1990s and early 2000s. He moved into film in 2004 with his directed short, "Six Shooter," and then jumped to features with 2008's "In Bruges." He's remained there since and has become a frequent Oscar nominee to boot. To celebrate his sixth and latest film "Wild Horse Nine" hitting theaters, here are all of McDonagh's movies, ranked!

McDonagh's first film was a short one: 2004's "Six Shooter," which is available to watch for free on YouTube. In 2006, "Six Shooter" received an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. It's the least of McDonagh's films by its very nature as a short, but running only 26 minutes has a positive double-edge: The script is small but airtight, like a great short story should be.

Brendan Gleeson plays Donnelly, an Irish man taking a train ride after his wife died in the hospital that morning. There's also a couple (David Wilmot and Aisling O'Sullivan) onboard reeling from the death of their infant son, as well as a very rude and loud kid (Rúaidhrí Conroy). The kid enjoys running his mouth and prodding the other passengers, and rest assured, he's holding a dark secret too. 

Even with its short runtime, "Six Shooter" still has a lot of what have become McDonagh's trademarks as a storyteller. There's a death scene that'll make you jump with how abrupt it is, as well as an overall theme of grief-driven people looking to suicide for the answer. There's also a twist, seeded offhandedly in the movie's opening, that comes back and completely reframes everything at the end. 

Considering the accolades "Six Shooter" earned, all the way up to the Academy, it's also a credit to McDonagh that he hasn't remade it as a full-length feature. The train ride setting benefits from the brevity, and while the twist is satisfying at 20 minutes of build-up, at 90 it might be a drag. "Six Shooter" sits well enough as is.

In "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri," McDonagh wrote a story about a tight-knit community in the vein of several of his plays. But as you can guess from the title, this one takes place in small town America, not rural Ireland. Whether McDonagh succeeded in his self-imposed challenge of setting with "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" still splits audiences.

Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand, who won Best Actress for the performance) is a woman grieving the still-unsolved rape and murder of her daughter, Angela (Kathryn Newton). To apply some pressure to police chief Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), she puts up three billboards outside the town that read, in succession: "Raped While Dying." "And Still No Arrests?" "How Come, Chief Willoughby?" Mildred turns her grief into a spectacle the town can't look away from.

Upon wide release, "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" attracted a vocal backlash alongside its accolades. The main lightning rod was the character Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell), a racist police officer accused of torturing a Black suspect, who attempts a soulful redemption arc. Many found that approach in poor taste; Dixon doesn't repent his bigotry, but the film insists he has a heart in spite of it.

McDonagh has said he did not intend "Three Billboards" as a message movie about American politics, and he's definitely not the type of writer who uses his characters to deliver moralistic lectures. The easy answer is that McDonagh was a little careless about adding local color to the kind of story he's written about Irish villages before. Mixed with his predilection for asking audiences to sympathize with immoral people, that approach landed the wrong way for many. McDonagh's settings usually feel whimsical, like black comedy fairy tales, and that doesn't quite mesh with politically potent themes.

Two of McDonagh's most frequent leading men are Colin Farrell and Sam Rockwell, but he's only used them together in one movie: his third film, and second feature, "Seven Psychopaths," which is a much stranger, more contemplative movie than its violent-sounding title suggests. McDonagh's most structurally ambitious movie, "Seven Psychopaths" is Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman's "Adaptation" by way of Quentin Tarantino.

Farrell plays Marty, a writer's block-afflicted screenwriter working on his new script "Seven Psychopaths." He's also best friends with a criminal, Billy (Rockwell), who gets himself in hot water after kidnapping mob boss Charlie Costello's (Woody Harrelson) dog and sleeping with Costello's girlfriend, Angela (Olga Kurylenko).

As Marty, Billy, and Billy's partner-in-crime Hans (Christopher Walken) drive away fleeing the gangsters, the movie tips its hand. Marty suggests that, in his "Seven Psychopaths" script, "the first hour should be like a perfect set-up for an out-and-out revenge flick." But then the leads should "walk away" and just go out to the dessert and talk like real people. Billy is dumbfounded ("No shootouts?!"), but lo and behold, that's what the actual "Seven Psychopaths" you're watching does. 

The movie's meta approach lets McDonagh engage in some amusing self-criticism. "Your women characters are awful," Hans tells Marty. Marty, not even trying to deny it, just answers that "it's a hard world for women." There are also layered interludes demonstrating Marty's ideas for his screenplay, like a former Viet Cong soldier (Long Nguyen) on a vengeance quest. 

Your mileage with "Seven Psychopaths" will depend heavily on your tolerance for metafiction. But if you can get on its wavelength, it's a very funny movie with three excellently played leads.

As a filmmaker settles into their career, there's always the risk they'll start going through the motions, i.e. making films that only echo what they've said or accomplished in previous, better films. I mention this because McDonagh's latest film "Wild Horse Nine" has the exact same essential premise as "In Bruges" — two professional murderers on holiday where one has been tasked with killing the other.

In 1973, Chris (John Malkovich) and Lee (Sam Rockwell) are CIA agents working in Santiago, Chile to undermine the country's democracy and bring dictator Augusto Pinochet to power. They take a vacation to Easter Island; Chris is dying of cancer, and he wants Lee to kill him in a peaceful place. Their boss, MJ (Steve Buscemi), is worried because Chris is talking about penning memoirs and sharing the CIA's darkest secrets.

This is both Malkovich and Buscemi's first time working with McDonagh, and both actors take to his dialogue easily. Malkovich is perfectly cast as the airy and impish Chris, just as Buscemi brings his tightly wound Mr. Pink from "Reservoir Dogs" energy to MJ. "Old killer haunted by his past" is nothing new, but Chris isn't broody and self-flagellating even though he is suffering Catholic guilt. He's more like the eccentric grandfather who says what's on his mind because he's aged past caring about consequences.

The first chunk of "Wild Horse Nine" is a little uneventful, as Lee and Chris tour Easter Island and bicker. But the same could be said of "In Bruges," so I should've trusted the process. The movie's emotional arcs and its mysteries come together beautifully in the second half. It's also politically sharper, or at least angrier, than "Three Billboards." If you want to hear how America supposedly "protects democracy" across the world, watch something else.

"Breaking up" with a longtime friend can be just as painful as ending a romantic relationship. Don't believe me? Then live a little, but before that, also go and watch "The Banshees of Inisherin," the definitive and brutal friend breakup movie.

In 1994, McDonagh tried to write a play titled "The Banshees of Inisheer," but couldn't crack it. He hung onto the title, and years later he found a story for which to use it (albeit tweaked to reflect the change from the real Irish island Inisheer to the fictional Inisherin). Set in the 1920s, "Banshees" follows two former lifelong friends, farmer Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and fiddle player Colm (Brendan Gleeson). 

Colm decides one day he doesn't want to be friends anymore. Unlike your typical movie feud, there's no real inciting incident. Pádraic is a nice guy, but boring, and so Colm — who's in a midlife crisis and wants to write a musical composition that history will remember — doesn't want to speak to him any more. You can tell they've been friends because of convenience first: It's a small island and they have little else in their lives. Since Pádraic didn't do anything wrong, there's no real way to repair their friendship, and attempts at reconciliation eventually beget revenge.

Farrell and Gleeson's casting carries extra weight considering they starred together in McDonagh's "In Bruges." That film was about their characters' saving each other through their friendship, whereas this one is about them hurting each other as a friendship dissolves. Farrell's puppy dog face is perfect for the spurned and confused Pádraic, while Gleeson's turns his usual jovial presence as cold as Inisherin's ocean winds. The virtual third player is Kerry Condon as Pádraic's sister Siobhán, the exasperated straight woman of Inisherin.

"In Bruges" holds a special place in my film-loving heart. I saw it when I was about 14 years old, and, as a Catholic school alum just beginning to love Quentin Tarantino, I was perfectly primed for it to floor me. I still remember it as a pivotal moment in my journey as a cinephile and it holds up as McDonagh's most effective, perfectly-executed movie.

Ray (Colin Farrell) and his mentor Ken (Brendan Gleeson) are two British-Irish hitmen sent to hide out in a Belgian city, Bruges, and await instruction from their boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes). Ken loves the town's old-fashioned charm and the sight-seeing, but Ray is irritable and makes it clear Bruges is the last place he wants to be.

What seems like a buddy comedy reveals itself as a devastating drama when we find out why the pair are in Bruges. During their previous job (Ray's first), a little boy died as collateral damage. It was an accident, yes, but it still only happened because Ray shot up a priest (Ciarán Hinds) by ambushing him in a confessional. So, yeah, can't imagine the good Lord will be looking too kindly on that! Ray has to rediscover the will to live, and Ken — who'd been assigned by Harry to kill Ray as punishment for killing the kid — is his unlikely guardian angel.

From the character arcs to the tone (which remains frequently funny even after we get the devastating truth), "In Bruges" is a writing masterclass elevated even higher by three perfectly in-tune performances. Ray's redemption was echoed off-screen, too. Colin Farrell taking on such a complex and morally compromised but still empathetic character let him prove what a great actor he is after a rough few years prior.