Mojave

Mojave is a 2015 American crime thriller film written and directed by William Monahan. The film stars Garrett Hedlund, Oscar Isaac, Mark Wahlberg, Louise Bourgoin, and Walton Goggins. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 18, 2015. The film was released on DirecTV Cinema on December 3, 2015, prior to opening in a limited release on January 22, 2016, by A24. Plot Tom, a successful Hollywood film director, is recovering from an all-night partying affair. He is still suffering from his heavy drinking and his "girlfriend" is still sleeping it off in bed as the sun rises. Tom decides to get away from it all by going to the desert in his jeep only to encounter an unexpected antagonist, who is a homicidal drifter named John "Jack" Jackson. Tom anticipates Jack's motives when Jack visits his camp at night and sends him away from his camp disarmed of his rifle and ammunition. Jack is armed with a Bowie knife he had concealed and slung on the inside of his coat. Tom manages to defend himself with a smaller retractable knife which he carries and which he is able to get out in time to overpower Jack and throw him out of the camp. The next day, Tom is still in the desert and cannot return to L.A. because he had previously overturned in his jeep and cannot recover the disabled vehicle. He spends the night in a cave and when a figure appears in the entrance he assumes that it is Jack returning to rob him and he shoots at the figure, killing him instantly. On closer inspection it proves not to be Jack, but a patrolling police officer whom Tom has inadvertently killed. Since the rifle is the one which he took from Jack while disarming him, Tom leaves the scene with the rifle intentionally left behind in order to make it look as if Jack was the culprit. Meanwhile, Jack separately discovers the abandoned jeep in the desert the next day and manages to find a filled-out car registration form in it with Tom's name and address inside. Jack feels that with his information of Tom's misdeeds he can now return to L.A. and use the information to blackmail Tom for a few hundred thousand dollars. He starts to hitchhike back to L.A.