Stop me if you've heard this one: "Mojave" features great talents trapped in a lousy movie.
Thomas (Garrett Hedlund) is a whiny, rich Hollywood artist who works with Norman (Mark Wahlberg) and Jim (Walton Goggins). Thomas runs off into the desert to find himself and faces off against cruel-but-cunning drifter Jack (Oscar Isaac). Writer-director William Monahan ("The Gambler," "The Departed") fills "Mojave" with plenty of characters talking at each other with amateur biblical and literary references (I'd have believed in Ahab if he had two legs ..."). He forgets to add any real characters, story, or tension.
"Mojave" is feels low-rent, in oddly glaring ways. Jack the Drifter first appears dressed up as a costume-store cowboy, replete with fake wig. The fake wig isn't fake within the story, nor is the costume. Neither Isaac nor Hedlund, trapped in the desert, have any hint of dirt on them, no sign of wear from their time against the elements. There is a feeling of "boys playing dress-up" that permeates the movie. That feeling extends to the writing. Monahan clearly enjoyed playing his hand at a dry-wit philosophical Western, but the shoes don't fit. "Mojave" feels like a 15-year-old boy's Cormac McCarthy fan-fiction, a counterfeit "The Counselor."
Oscar Isaac is the main attraction with "Mojave." After 2015, "Mojave" feels like precisely the kind of movie he won't have to make anymore. He puts in his best effort but can't salvage the dialogue or plot; Hedlund and Goggins, too, do their best with what they have. The real star is Wahlberg, fresh off his against-type performance in "The Gambler." In "Mojave," Wahlberg just yells constantly about how important he is. He, alone, feels genuine.
There's something about the Western; it has existed since the start of mass-media. By virtue of geography it was a founding genre of cinema, and certainly continues to go strong after almost a century. "Mojave" is a bad Western that deeply wants to be a good Western. But like so many other movies it mistakes the flourishes of classic Westerns (no-named men with strict philosophies and questionable motives) for the substance of them, forgetting character, storytelling, atmosphere, politics. Rather than re-configuring, "Mojave" only manages to halfheartedly recreate what came before. It's a bizarre film by accident that offers few pleasures.