Mojave

'Mojave' is the brain child from the writer of 'The Departed'. Add in a slew of great actors and the result is me, with high hopes for this movie. But within the first few minutes those hopes were drastically lowered. This is mainly due to the all around aimlessness of the story. Garrett Hedlund wanders into the desert and meets the hick version of Oscar Isaac. Than Hudlund inexplicably bludgeons Isaac and frames him for the murder of a police officer. So, Isaac follows Hedlund back to LA in hopes of exacting of his revenge. All of this roughly taking place with in the first ten or twenty minutes of the film. Now we have our story. What I liked most about 'Mojave' is the scenes that Isaac and Hedlund share. While there may only be two or three of them, I found them to be the best parts of the movie. Both sociopaths, it was interesting and sometimes rather funny to watch these two go back and forth.

The only other aspect worth mentioning is the music. In this otherwise uninspired film, the music really helped capture the mood of each scene. Whether or not the scene actually has the desired affect on you is beside the point. Even though, more times than not, the music is really the only thing that helps move scenes forward.

Other than these few things there really isn't much that 'Mojave' offers. The performances are passable but almost every actor in the film feels miscast. All of them seem to over or under act in a strange attempt to give these flat characters meaning. And boy most of these characters are two dimensional.

They worst offenders come in the form of Mark Wahlberg and Walton Goggins. These two come into the film as nothing more than vessels for director William Monahan to force in his own opinions. There is nothing more to them than that. They come into the film, spit their "political commentary", and leave as quickly as they came.

As you watch this, it's impossible not to think, "Wow, what the heck was that about?". Not to mention the incredibly in your face social commentary. I understand that many of us are hopelessly addicted to our phones but do you have to pretend like EVERYONE is? And, do you seriously have to show this in every single scene??

The worst part is, they don't just talk about it. There is one scene in particular where a character exits a bar and passes a line of people. ALL of which are on their phone, and to make things even less subtle the film feels the need to add phone clicks and buzzes. This is not a film that children are going to see so do you have to make it this obvious?

I'm pretty sure that I do actually have a brain and I can pick up on subtly. So why ram it down my throat with next to no subtly? Aside from the two or three scenes that Isaac and Hedlund share this is all the film does for its hour and a half run time. Use uncomfortably pretentious celebrity cameos to drive home the films own misguided views of the world. While it does do some things right I can't say that this is worth recommending. This overall standardness is enough to send 'Mojave' spiraling into obscurity.

Let's take two emotionally unstable alpha males (one of them a psychopath), and have them cross paths leading to a confrontation and tragedy in the desert - and you have quite an intriguing yarn. My main criticism would be that the protagonist was not that likable a character. He was dissatisfied with his glamorous life and rather unkind to most of the people he encountered in the film. I get that there were issues with his wife and child, however, this gets only a brief mention in the movie. Perhaps it should be have been built upon more to make him a more sympathetic character. Yes, rich people have problems, too - we just weren't entirely sure what his were. BUT - he played his role very well and I did enjoy the movie. Kudos to both actors for their performances. It was suspenseful and fairly quick-paced.

There are some writers who seem to think if they quote Shakespeare and Herman Melville within their own work, they might automatically be regarded as possessing a higher level of intellect - not so, and Mojave offers a reasonable example as proof. Here we have writer/director William Monahan (The Departed) doing just this in a rather lame attempt to dress up his lowly 'character' study about a suicidal 'artist' (why suicidal? because he has success and luxury laid on, a loving wife and delightful young daughter who idolizes him) I ask, what better reason could you have for wanting to commit suicide?. Borrowing a leaf from the Travers character in Paris Texas our 'artist' wanders into tho desert to explore how many ways he can kill himself. Failing at several, he appears to settle on drinking himself to death.

While still in the desert he meets another equally disturbed fellow who is obviously quite happy to do him in. Instead of excepting the offer, our suicide contender suddenly decides he won't allow this and begins looking at ways of murdering this chap - another perfectly reasonable idea! The ensuing cat and mouse game goes on interminably, with each man sprouting endless expletives & pseudo-psycho-babble as they attempt to kill each other...as well as any innocent by-standers who just happen to get in their way.

All this might sound most interesting to those who enjoy Tarantino type nonsense but, any thinking viewer might beware. Is there anything that's good in all this?. The desert is well photographed, Oscar Isaac and Garrett Hedlund are occasionally OK in the leads and some bits of the score music by UK born Andrew Hewitt are quite interesting. As for the supporting cast, Walton Goggins' character is so bad it's laughable, as is Mark Walberg's foul mouthed sex obsessed producer.

Cultists may enjoy the over-the-top foolishness but this is supposed to be a dramatic modern classic!. Next thing to down right awful nastiness.

Something that looks like a 'film', specifically this term and the aesthetic to which it implies, I feel has come to be expected of contemporary dramas/character studies. Mojave knows it. It looks to tick a lot of these archetypal boxes: jaded, frustrated characters, blatant motifs (the temptation of Christ?), a redemptive narrative, an undertone of despair that never loosens up until the end of the last arc. Yes with all these elements motivating it's narrative, the movie never achieves a sense of coherency; it's Hitchcockian one moment with it's intermittent key score, and then Fincher-esque the next with it's sweeping pans and use of negative space in shots. It's an actor's playground that, as charming and talented as all the individuals are, doesn't leave a lot for the audience to soak in, unless you really, really like angry, shout-y Mark Wahlberg, who is playing quite possibly the closest characterisation to his real life personality in this role. I never fully understood the goal of the protagonist... I guess it had something to do with doing the right thing and his daughter? Too much Tyler Durton syndrome in concepts like these I feel.

Greetings again from the darkness. The isolation of the desert seems the perfect place for an artist to achieve the existential awakening necessary during a time of personal doubt and crisis. The journey to find one's true self becomes much more complicated when the one-man desert getaway is interrupted by heavy boozing, self-destructive tendencies, and a serial-killer sociopath. Such is the case with writer/director William Monahan's (Oscar winner for his screenplay of The Departed) latest film.

Garrett Hedlund plays Thomas, a very successful filmmaker, who seems to take no joy from his life of luxury … a mansion in the hills, cool cars, a wife and daughter, and endless adulation. Sporting the ultra-cool celebrity look of sunglasses and long hair, Thomas heads off into the desert to either clear his mind or end his life. We aren't really sure which, and neither is he. Lots of Vodka and reckless Jeep driving leave Thomas in a showdown of wits and machismo across a campfire from a sinister yet articulate drifter.

The drifter is Jack, played by Oscar Isaac, and it's no surprise when we learn he is a serial killer … the sociopath part we figured out quickly, right along with Thomas. Their under-the-stars confrontation leads to a tragic accident the next day, and pits these two in a B-movie game of cat and mouse with a tone that reminds a bit of Cape Fear (1991) and U-Turn (1997).

Heading back to L.A., Thomas comes up with an incredibly stupid plan to cover his tracks. Being famous "since I was 19 years old" and having financial success with movies hasn't trained Thomas on facing off against a clever nemesis. Even his discussion with his manager (played by an unusually low-key Walton Goggins) comes across as literary-speak rather than real advice. "Worry about what seems to be" is the advice Thomas rolls with.

Monahan fills the screen with tough-guy dialogue for these two characters that are both simultaneously stupid and smart. Jack and Thomas go at each like a couple of intellects, but it's the class warfare that stands out. The 99% versus the 1%. The message seems to be that it comes down to circumstance on whether one is an artist or a psychotic felon … and the line separating the two is pretty slim. It's also not a very well disguised ripping of the film industry … especially of producers. Mark Wahlberg chews some scenery as a d-bag movie producer who talks loud and fast while accomplishing little. It's a pretty funny turn for Wahlberg, though unfortunately his character spends limited time on screen. Louise Bourgoin has a couple of scenes, and quickly proves more would have been welcome.

The film may not be much to look at, and doesn't really make much sense, but some of the dialogue duels and "brother" banter, manage to keep us interested throughout. "Take a left. Take a right." It doesn't much matter with these two well-read adversaries from opposite sides of the tracks.