Critic Reviews

This movie soars on the strength of the screenplay. Monahan gives Hedlund and in particular Isaac dozens upon dozens of rich, intricate lines, and they’re both up to the task and then some. Isaac is an actor who is not afraid to go big or go home, but in Mojave, his finest moments are relatively quiet and sublime. Every inch of his performance is pure excellence.

The players and their flinty, smart dialogue make this lean movie the screen equivalent of bleached bones in the desert sand — bones with just enough meat on them to lure us in.

Prickly, suspenseful, even coolly humorous, Mojave finds noirish fun in the existential woes of a successful artist and old-fashioned movie pleasure in the parry and thrust of sharp dialogue.

Mojave’s real reason for existing is the wiry, woolly dialogue that Monahan has spun out for his actors.

The overarching problem with Mojave is that the two tones don't mesh well together, to the point where it seems Monaghan can't decide if he wants to make an ominous neo-western or a dark satire. Fortunately, the filmmaker's committed lead actors make some of the storytelling issues bearable.

To his credit, the writer-director maintains a pretty decent balance between his disgust with this Business We Call Show and the movie’s thriller mechanics, which are not entirely well-engineered but do chug along to a not-unsatisfying climax.

Does it add up? Not really, but it passes the time nicely, working best when Mr. Monahan keeps it vague and off-kilter as his characters roam among the Hollywood ghosts.

A weird, uneven mixed bag, there’s much about Mojave that’s paradoxically maddening and doesn’t really add up. As the movie plot becomes less interesting and more straight-forward — like a slasher movie with the evil antagonist character slowly closing in on the hero — it becomes funnier and more purely enjoyable.

Humor does provide some welcome relief from the heaviness of Mohave’s script.

Mojave is a movie-length standoff between two detestable villains. One is a serial killer. The other is a filmmaker.