'Mojave': Too pretentious, too chatty
William Monahan won an Oscar for his remarkable screenplay for Martin Scorsese's The Departed.
William Monahan won an Oscar for his remarkable screenplay for Martin Scorsese's The Departed.
He has had less luck as a director. His debut, London Boulevard, features good chemistry between leads Colin Farrell and Keira Knightley, but not much else.
The same is true of his sophomore effort behind the camera. Mojave is a confrontational and awfully chatty two-man thriller starring Garrett Hedlund and Oscar Isaac as frenemies who stage a murderous, if utterly meaningless, dispute that takes them from the desert through Los Angeles and the Hollywood Hills.
It would better to call it Two Actors in Search of a Story.
A preposterous exercise about masculinity, creativity, and criminality in America, Mojave is strung together with western and noir tropes seasoned with literary pretension.
Hedlund plays an angst-ridden actor who is sick of life. His family has left him, and he has gone off into the desert to find himself - or something. There, he runs into Isaac, who happens to be a killer - but one with a literary bent.
When not trying to murder each other, the pair discuss Shaw, Melville, and Shakespeare.
The performances are solid, if a little over the top, the photography and lighting impressive, and the landscapes arresting.
But we've seen this type of hard-core Existentialism far too often. And in far better films.
215-854-2736
Mojave *1/2 (out of four stars)
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Directed by William Monahan. With Oscar Isaac, Garrett Hedlund, Mark Wahlberg, Walton Goggins. Distributed by A24.
Running time: 1 hour, 33 mins.
Parent's guide: R (violence, profanity).
Playing at: AMC Loews Cherry Hill 24.
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