I vividly remember seeing the preview for Mojave at the Brattle Theater and thinking that it looked and felt amazing, but sadly the person who created the preview had a better vision than the filmmakers. What I thought that I signed up for was a tense, streamlined, intellectual thriller about two men in a battle of wits and body, but what I got was a pretentious, barely watchable movie with at least two too many characters about how Hollywood makes you more dangerous than a serial killer literally and psychologically. Whoops, was that a spoiler. I just saved you 99 minutes of your life. You’re welcome.
Mojave is about a man who has been famous since he was nineteen years old, but we don’t find out until much later than he is a director. I hope that I missed how he got on the road to fame, but whatever, we’re supposed to believe that he has everything and wants nothing so he tries to get that by going into the desert where he encounters Oscar Isaac. Because he is not a heterosexual woman, but a heterosexual man, he does not welcome his presence and sees him as a threat and competition. He finally begins to want things out of life: the stranger’s gun and the upper hand.
A harsh assessment of his character and a better direction for this movie would have been to discover that his ruthless approach to bringing a story to life and succeeding in show biz has unwittingly cultivated a desire to be a killer instead of wimping out and trying to retroactively make it about self defense. Mojave pulls punches about its main character by providing rationales and misunderstandings to excuse his aggressive behavior. Just because we find out later that the man whose gun he stole, and that he beat up without any physical provocation on the stranger’s part is a serial killer does not change the fact that what he wants is a physical manifestation of his sociopathic soul. A better conclusion would have been that he decides to become a serial killer and pin the murders on this stranger, who is guilty but framed and tries to get revenge against the copycat stealing his material. At any rate, the movie that I want does not exist. The famous man returns home unaware that the stranger is following him and wants to finish their confrontation regardless of the collateral damage.
Instead of focusing on the strongest part of the story, the battle between these two men, Mojave takes detours by switching focus on the other people in the famous man’s life: his French mistress, Walter Goggins, an agent/lawyer, and Mark Wahlberg, a former drug dealer producer. I think that the latter two dilute the focus of the story and any tension seeped away for me instead of building up to the denouement. Maybe my reaction to Goggins actually indicates how good he is, but every time I see him, I think, “Not this guy again.” I just saw Tomb Raider with Alicia Viklander before Mojave. He was perfect in The Hateful Eight, but his bored, corrupt dissolute schtick is getting old for me. I did not need another character to articulate what the famous man already articulates throughout the movie. Wahlberg’s character seems to exist just to further illustrate how shallow and empty the famous man’s world is and to stress how dangerous the stranger is. On one hand, it is great that it is the man’s friend, not mistress, is actually dangerous, and by hurting him, he actually does manage to land a blow on the famous man by hurting the trajectory of his career, but considering that the famous man does not care about his career, and we already get how empty his life is based on the opening scenes, I think that it is redundant. We needed a ruthless editor.
One brilliant scene shows that Mojave could have been a better film. We are all familiar with the trope of the protagonist’s love interest being in danger because someone is angry with the protagonist. This film cleverly sidesteps this trope and gives her the upper hand. As a woman actor in Hollywood who has reached a certain level of fame by surviving a gauntlet of danger, she is unimpressed and unbothered by her famous lover’s warning that a serial killer could be stalking her. She turns down the role, and one scene accomplishes what the entire movie sets out to achieve, but doesn’t. Maybe instead of the usual man on man showdown, the movie should have been a woman who never has to get physical to defeat a psycho killer.
Isaac works harder than Mojave deserves. Initially the film felt like it was actually straight out of The Dark Tower, which would have been a better project than the actual film. Unfortunately his character adds up to a crazy Nick from New Girl instead of someone who is steadily terrifying when he talks less and channels Halloween’s Michael Myers’ physicality. Garrett Hedlund plays the famous man, and if you asked, “Who,” exactly! I’ve apparently seen him in other movies such as Unbroken, Four Brothers, Friday Night Lights and Troy, but I have no memory of his performances, which again, could be a sign that it is time to go to the doctor because I’m suffering from memory loss, and/or it could be him.
Mojave is The Hitcher but in Hollywood and with the serial killer being the victim because he had the unfortunate luck to pick a successful sociopath as a victim, but without the courage to embrace the concept that it teased. Instead the film decides to make the famous man emerge from this ordeal appreciative of his life at the expense of other people’s lives and property as if he is that person, and not the person who finally finds joy in destroying and obliterating the mostly deadly predator, another human being, that he could find. The movie toys with the idea that the stranger is imaginary and an aspect of the famous man’s more sinister side which he must destroy to return to society as a functional human being, but enough objective markers of his existence abandons that premise. Skip Mojave and watch David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars instead which was more psychologically disturbing in its depiction of human nature in Hollywood.