41
Metascore
23 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 75Movie NationRoger MooreMovie NationRoger MooreThe 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.
- 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.
- 58The PlaylistRodrigo PerezThe PlaylistRodrigo PerezA 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.
- 50New York PostKyle SmithNew York PostKyle SmithMojave is a movie-length standoff between two detestable villains. One is a serial killer. The other is a filmmaker.
- 42The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyThe A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyBy turns inert and logorrheic, William Monahan’s pseudo-intellectual nut-scratcher Mojave is a movie of barely furnished mansions and lens flare-speckled landscapes.
- 40The Hollywood ReporterFrank ScheckThe Hollywood ReporterFrank ScheckIn a simpler form, Mojave might have been a gripping if minor genre film. Instead, it's undone by the sort of pretentious overwriting that might have seemed impressive in the '70s but now comes across as merely forced.
- 30VarietyScott TobiasVarietyScott TobiasMonahan isn’t required to satisfy bloodlust or to pay off conventional plot points, even if his screenplay for “The Departed” displayed an abundant talent for doing so. But he assumes too much in believing that the audience will connect in any way with a sour, prickly narcissist who’s trapped in the gilded cage of wealth and fame.
- 25Slant MagazineChuck BowenSlant MagazineChuck BowenWith the film, director William Monahan offers audiences a bundle of fetishes dressed up as an existentialist thriller about the class system.