‘Who is the real sociopath here, me or you?’ asks serial killer Jack (Oscar Isaac) to Hollywood screenwriter Tom (Garrett Hedlund) in William Monahan’s directorial debut; an Oscar winner for The Departed, Monahan’s film feels like a spec script updated to an industry where, for one brief shining moment in his life, a writer can call the shots. The result is a film that vanished on initial release, and pops up on Prime in 2022 to ensnare the curious. While hard-boiled and deliberately alienating, Mojave is also as tough and uncompromising as the desert from which it takes its name.
Tom is introduced drifting in the desert; he’s flipped his car, and meets cute with another drifter around an isolated campfire; the dishevelled Jack, who Tom quickly identifies as ‘the devil’. Tom steals Jack’s rifle, understandably given the latent threat of their intense dog-eat-dog situation. But as he escapes, Tom ends up accidentally killing an inquiring cop with the same rifle, and whatever guilt he feels is embodied in a physical threat when Jack shaves his head and follows him back to Hollywood…
Mark Wahlberg, whose career was revived by his way with Monahan’s dialogue in The Departed, has an extended cameo here as a producer with a confidante in Walton Goggins and a penchant for drugs and prostitutes, or ‘sex workers’ as one of the cops who interrogate Jack rephrases it. The view of Hollywood, from Kings Road downwards, is a cynical, caustic and nihilistic one; Jack’s got a point when he confronts Tom in a snooty LA bar. Jack is evil personified, and Isaac is game for the task, but he also sees Tom’s weakness as a means through which he can gain leverage. But as dangerous as the devil is, he meets his match in Tom, who embodies the worst sense of male self-regard that comes with the Laurel Canyon mind-set.
‘In a negotiation, never be the first to mention a number,’ is one of a number of pithy lines here; Monahan seems to be enjoying the freedom to capture bleak nihilism. Yet Mojave is a tight 90 minutes, with tension but also restraint; Jack adopts the dog of one of his victims, and the audience will fear the worst for the cute pooch, but rest assured that the dog emerges unscathed, even if the punch-line is still morally gnarly. We’re looking at a long wallow in existential guilt, in a vintage Paul Schrader style, and with a soup of testosterone simmering on a low gas, Mojave is an unfairly neglected film that should work the room for hardened film noir fans.
If this had had any kind of release in 2015, I’d have seen it. I like Isaac and Wahlberg and know the worth of Monahan as a writer, not sure about wallowing of the Schrader type, but sounds worth a punt.
Whenever someone asks “who is the real X”, that’s the final clue that THEY are the “x” in the equation. It’s usually bad too, so I recommend shooting them as soon as they start the whole sentence…
You would probably get on well with the hero of this movie, who shoots first and asks questions…not even later. And the anti-Hollywood stance would be right up your alley too…
Hahahaha 😀
Nope. But only because the library doesn’t have it in. Otherwise I might watch it. The library did have Beyond the Reach, which was also set in the Mojave desert. It looked almost as tough and uncompromising as my critical aperçus.
What IS your favourite kind of dessert?
A really heavy cheesecake.
Yours? And don’t say oatmeal. You can’t have oats for dessert.
Cranachan. Tried it?
Nope. Looks like breakfast.
Most things do in the morning.
Yep.
Oscar Isaac?
Yep I’ll watch the movie.
Looks entertaining. The trailer makes it seem like a second tier thriller from the 1990s – brooding, tense, slightly portentous and a little bit silly. But very watchable.
I like that Best Laid Plans kinda noir feel. I feel this is too good a film to be discarded. Good up and coming cast, dark satire of Hollywood, nihilistic dialogue, all went down easy for me…