Mojave (2004)
This teen ensemble film, which is
really about young 20- somethings, I guess, starts
out decently. A bunch of city boys ride into the dessert
for a rave and get high on peyote. One of the kids
is Rider Strong (of TV's "Boy Meets World") and the
other is Eric Christian Olson (of "Dumb
and Dumberer.) There's the black kid, played by
Bumper Robinson, and the Asian kid, played by Wayne
Young.
For a bit the film seems like it
might be okay. The guys take peyote. Young freaks
out. Robinson hooks up with a girl. The group stays
up in a cave in the morning to get some sleep. We
wonder where the film is going to go and then, bammo,
it turns into one of the silliest, biggest piece of
crap you can imagine. Often times, it's so bad it's
actually good.
Vince Vieluf, who you will recognize
but not be able to place (he played the guy with the
pierced tongue in "Rat
Race") comes on the scene as a dumbass who rides
a motorcycle and shoots guns in the desert. His friend,
played by Brendan Fletcher (who was in an indie film
that I liked a couple years back called "Rollercoaster")
isn't as crazy as Vieluf but somehow they get into
a shootout with our group of heros and try and rape
the girl that Robinson has picked up.
After this, all hell breaks loose
and the film turns into a dumbass good vs. evil piece
of dung that introduces Dash Mihok (what the fuck
is he doing in this piece of shit?) as an insane baddy
who, for absolutely no coherent reason, decides to
kill all the city kids. Luckily he has a group of
people who will apparently do anything he says as
all of his young friends own the exact same motorcycle
as Vieluf and Fletcher do. Mihok is apparently so
well-connected that he can talk truckers into running
down kids on the road and killing them without the
Teamsters giving it a second thought.
This is one of the most ridiculous,
most ignorant, most hopelessly contrived piece of
shit I've seen in a long time.
Mihok really needs to fire his agent,
if he hasn't already. He's just fucking horrible here.
Of course, the script gives him little reason to be
anything but rotten. At the very least, it seems,
he knew he was stuck in a piece of shit and tried
his best to just go with the badness of it all.
And it's sad to see someone as cute
and talented as Strong reduced to playing a part in
a film like this. It's obvious he took the role only
because it was a respite from playing 14 year olds,
even though he is in his 20's. For what it's worth,
Strong, Olson, Robinson, Young and Fletcher have some
decent moments in the film. But this junk is just
so bad. It's hard to imagine anyone liking it for
more than its absurd awfulness.
Note:
Written and directed by David Kebo
and Rudi Liden. This is the first feature film for
both.
Filmed in New Mexico.
To the best of my knowledge, the
film does not yet have a distributor.
Viewed in October 2004 as a part
of the Austin Film Festival at the Dobie Theater.
