Movie Review

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MOJAVE

Directed and written by William Monahan. Starring Garrett Hedlund, Oscar Isaac, and Mark Wahlberg.

At the Brattle. 93 minutes.

R (language and some violence).

Some of the best filmmakers lose their way in the desert.

The wheels fell off for Michelangelo Antonioni in “Zabriskie Point’’ (1970). People are still wondering what Gus Van Sant was up to in Death Valley with “Gerry’’ (2002).

“London Boulevard’’ director William Monahan does not measure up to those two peers, but as a screenwriter the Boston native does have an ear for salty, authentic dialogue and a knack for twisted generic characters — as demonstrated in “The Departed’’ (2006). Maybe that was because he was adapting another movie (Hong Kong filmmakers Lau Wai-Keung and Alan Mak’s 2002 cop thriller “Infernal Affairs’’). In his second directorial effort, “Mojave,’’ Monahan has no such map to follow, and he wanders in a land of sophomoric pretentiousness and banal profundities.

Trouble starts with the protagonist: a screenwriter named Thomas. Played by hunky Garrett Hedlund, Thomas looks and talks like a dissipated Brad Pitt. He’s achieved a level of fame and fortune unfamiliar to most of those who toil in his thankless trade.

Is he happy? Of course not. In a snippet of an interview he whines about the meaninglessness of success. Who am I? He wonders. What do I want? And who wrote this awful monologue?

To find the answers he heads for the desert. He steals a jeep (it belongs to his producer, played by Mark Wahlberg, in a satiric portrayal that is more “Entourage’’ than “The Player’’), buys a couple of bottles of vodka and drives aimlessly until he crashes the car. Then it’s just him and the void. Until Jack (Oscar Isaac) appears, with a Winchester on his shoulder and an ankle-length duster, looking like a relic from a Sergio Leone movie.

Is Jack the devil, as he claims to be? He compares Thomas to Jesus, tempted and taunted by the illusory glories of this world, or at least the Hollywood version.

Whomever Jack is, he should just shut up. As pedantic and pretentious as Thomas, he even quotes George Bernard Shaw while savagely beating someone with an ax handle.

Perhaps he’s Thomas’s double. If so, they deserve each other, lost in the desert of a barren screenplay.

Peter Keough can be reached at petervkeough@gmail.com.