Yes. I feel sorry for Chris in Wild Horse Nine, even with everything we know about him. Watching a dying man cling to the person who knows him best gets to me. John Malkovich makes that need painfully easy to understand. Chris has done terrible things, and he still wants someone to stay.

The uncomfortable part is how quickly you start caring. One minute he is being funny or getting on Lee’s nerves. A little later you catch yourself worrying about him. Somewhere in between, his victims have slipped to the back of your mind.

That bothered me more than any question about whether Chris deserves sympathy. I had plenty of sympathy for him. I was less comfortable with how easily his company made me forget everybody else.

He Gets You Laughing First

Malkovich is a large part of the problem. Give him something appalling to say and he can make it sound like a minor complaint about the hotel.

Chris benefits enormously from that delivery. There is pleasure in listening to him, even when the words themselves ought to make you recoil. He has the confidence of someone who has spent years saying whatever he likes and expecting other people to deal with it.

We have all met a much less dangerous version of that person. The difficult friend who gets away with things because they are funny. The relative whose behaviour becomes a family anecdote. Everybody sighs and says that is just how he is.

With Chris, that indulgence becomes a much uglier proposition.

His history involves people whose lives he could end or ruin. Yet here we are enjoying his timing. I like that McDonagh lets that happen before giving us much room to feel pleased with our own judgment.

You can laugh at Chris and then feel a bit grubby about it. Sometimes the second reaction takes longer to arrive.

Being Frightened Makes Him Easier to Recognise

Most of us have very little in common with a veteran CIA operative. Fear of illness is another matter.

Chris’s cancer brings him into frighteningly ordinary territory. His body is failing. His behaviour is becoming harder to manage. Lee increasingly has to deal with a man whose needs are growing while his control is slipping away.

There is something sad about watching a person become dependent on somebody they are still perfectly capable of irritating.

Chris retains his personality through that decline. He can be abrasive and exhausting. You can imagine needing a break from him, then feeling awful for wanting one. Anyone who has spent time caring for a difficult person will recognise something in that.

The film gets a lot out of letting him remain difficult. A sweeter version of Chris would make the audience’s job far too easy. We would know exactly when to soften towards him.

Instead, the tenderness has to find its way through the same man we have been watching all along. His fear appears alongside the habits that make him unpleasant.

Lee Makes the Sadness Feel Personal

Sam Rockwell’s Lee gives us a reason to care about Chris that goes beyond the illness.

There is a whole relationship in the way these two put up with each other. The bickering has the familiarity of arguments that have been going on for years. You get the feeling that Lee could predict certain remarks before Chris opens his mouth.

That sort of closeness can look fairly unimpressive from the outside. A complaint. An irritated response. Another conversation neither person seems particularly keen to have.

Then you imagine one of them gone.

Suddenly all those irritating habits belong to someone the other man would miss. Even the things that drove him mad would leave a gap. That is where their friendship gets me.

For Chris, Lee is also someone who understands the life he has led. He requires very little explanation. As Chris becomes more vulnerable, the thought of losing that familiarity feels especially bleak.

I can care about that without deciding their friendship proves something wonderful about either man. People are capable of loving one person while treating others horrendously. Most of us know that already. Watching it play out between two actors this good makes it harder to keep at a comfortable distance.

Lee’s affection gives Chris a place in somebody’s life. You can see why he would be frightened of being left alone.

I Keep Coming Back to the People We Spend Less Time With

The trouble with following Chris closely is that we get to know him.

We hear him speak. We spend time with his fears. Malkovich gives us a face to watch and a voice we enjoy hearing. His suffering has a particular shape.

The suffering he has caused is much easier to leave in the background.

That imbalance matters. A dying man sitting in front of you will usually feel more immediate than people mentioned in accounts of his past. Your emotions respond to the person you have been given time with.

I think a viewer has to do a little work here. When Chris talks about his career, there were lives on the receiving end of it. There were people who wanted to get home. People who had somebody waiting for them.

We understand his attachment to Lee so readily. It takes only a small effort to imagine those other attachments.

This is where I become wary of getting too swept up in Chris’s sadness. He is receiving the close attention that makes a person feel fully human. The people harmed by his work deserve some of that attention too.

There is room to feel for him. I just want to keep remembering who else belongs in the picture.

Feeling Bad About Your Life Comes Late for Everyone Else

Chris’s guilt is interesting because it exists alongside so much of the man he has always been.

He can look back on his life and feel its weight while still carrying the arrogance that helped him live it. That feels plausible to me. A person can regret something and remain defensive about it. They can want comfort before they have properly faced what they did.

It also makes him frustrating.

There is a temptation to give a character enormous credit for finally feeling bad. We have spent so long waiting for a crack in the armour that any sign of distress can seem like a breakthrough.

But think about what that offers the people he hurt.

His regret may be sincere. It may even cost him something emotionally. The damage has already travelled far beyond him. Other people have had to build their lives around what happened, assuming they survived to do so.

You Can Still Want Someone to Stay With Him

By the end, my sympathy for Chris comes down to something fairly small. I want him to have someone beside him. I understand why he needs Lee.

That feeling sits awkwardly with everything else. It should.

The phrase “someone like Chris” suggests we ought to be able to sort him into a category and know what to feel. Malkovich makes him too particular for that. He is funny in ways you enjoy. He is difficult in ways that wear you out. Then his fear catches you somewhere tender.

I think you can let that happen. Caring about his final days leaves you free to judge the years that came before them.

What stays with me is how readily I can imagine being afraid in Chris’s position. I wish he had been better at imagining himself in somebody else’s.