William Monahan’s screenplay for The Departed is partially responsible for helping Martin Scorsese finally earn that long-deserved Oscar, though his work since then has been a bit of a mixed bag. Monahan’s latest sees him pulling double duty as writer and director for Mojave, a new thriller starring Oscar Isaac as a deranged loner who stalks Garrett Hedlund through Los Angeles. Maybe he had nothing better to do?

The first trailer has arrived a day before the film’s exclusive DirecTV debut. Mojave looks like a simple, Single White Male thriller in which Hedlund plays a brilliant, privileged artist who wanders out in the desert with suicide on his mind. That’s where he meets Isaac’s devilish character, who latches onto the artist and begins stalking him with the intention of killing the guy and taking everything he has.

Isaac reunites with his Inside Llewyn Davis co-star for the upcoming thriller, following a breakout couple of years that landed him a supporting role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Hedlund hasn’t had a similar streak; he most recently appeared in Joe Wright’s disastrous PanMojave doesn’t look particularly special — the throwback stalker angle, the “man is the most dangerous game” thing — but the strength of these two actors might offer enough to hold your interest for a solid 90 minutes or so.

Mojave is a classical, cerebral thriller about a brilliant, near-suicidal artist, Thomas (Garrett Hedlund), who attempts to escape his privileged existence into the desert only to encounter a homicidal, chameleon-like drifter—Jack (Oscar Isaac). Their first encounter at a campfire sets up a nonstop, violent duel of physical and intellectual equals. The game intensifies when Jack, while in murderous pursuit of Thomas, witnesses Thomas’ accidental killing of an innocent man he has mistaken for Jack. The chase moves from the spectacular vistas of the American desert to a noir Los Angeles, where Jack discovers Thomas’ notoriety as an artist and continues to remake his own identity in relentless pursuit of his victim, culminating in a vortex of criminality and brutality as Thomas emerges as an equally dangerous opponent.

Mojave debuts on DirecTV on December 3, followed by a theatrical release on January 6.

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