What’s It About
When their evil enemy resurfaces after 16 years, a group of ex-revolutionaries reunites to rescue one of their own’s daughter.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
Paul Thomas Anderson really went for it with “One Battle After Another,” and if I’m being honest, I’m still not sure how I feel about this absurd film. After seeing Anderson craft quiet masterpieces such as “The Master” and “Phantom Thread,” it’s fair to ask if anyone expected Anderson to drop a two-and-a-half-hour-long action film about revolutionaries and government thugs. But here we are, and it is certainly something. The film kicks off with Leonardo DiCaprio and Teyana Taylor as zealous activists who blow shit up and rob banks to liberate immigrants trapped in detention centers. They call themselves the French 75 and are essentially being Robin Hood with a lot more explosions. Taylor plays Perfidia Beverly Hills (yes, that’s really her character’s name), and she’s absolutely magnetic on screen. DiCaprio’s character goes by “Rocketman,” which should tell you exactly how serious this movie takes itself. Things get complicated when Perfidia gets pregnant and DiCaprio decides he wants to be a dad instead of a terrorist. Perfidia gets angry about the revolution being interrupted for diaper duty. Then, along comes Sean Penn as an off-the-wall military colonel named Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, and things go sideways extremely fast. Penn is very frightening in this role. His character becomes obsessed with Perfidia in the creepiest way possible, and he represents everything wrong with how our government treats people who don’t look like him. The movie makes it super clear that Lockjaw is basically every racist authority figure you’ve ever seen on the news, but Penn plays him so over-the-top that sometimes you almost laugh at how evil he is. The narrative continues sixteen years later, with DiCaprio’s character “Bob Ferguson” now living in a style that is “freewheeling,” with his teenage daughter Willa, who is played by newcomer Chase Infiniti. Bob is this paranoid mess who does not seem to leave his room other than to get high or watch old war movies. But Chase is good at giving us the experience of a teenager who loves her dad, but also is aware that he is completely fried. The father-daughter relationship is palpable, even when most of the other interactions in the movie feel like they are occurring on another planet. When the Lockjaw man’s home base eventually finds Bob, the movie takes on a chase sequence throughout California. Anderson then seems to remember he is indeed making an action movie, and we get some incredibly well-crafted car chase scenes that kept me awake. Usually, I zone out during action sequences, but Anderson shoots them in a creative way that makes you feel like you’re riding on the hood of the car. The camera work by Michael Bauman makes every twist and turn feel like you might fly off the screen. Benicio del Toro appears as Willa’s martial arts instructor, and one of Bob’s former revolutionary comrades is played by Regina Hall. Both of them provide a calm energy that helps to balance DiCaprio’s manic performance. There is a laugh-out-loud scene in which DiCaprio is trying to remember a password he learned sixteen years earlier; his panic and mashed-up reasoning are so real and authentic, it’s just unintentionally funny. The movie definitely has something to say about what’s happening in America right now. Anderson isn’t being subtle about it either. The villains are pretty much every white supremacist organization you have probably read about, even to the point of golden meeting rooms resembling the apartment of a former president. Immigration raids and family separations might as well have been pulled from the newspaper, as they feel completely urgent, even while the movie is getting ridiculous. And this is the main problem with the movie. Anderson just can’t fully decide if he wants to make a serious point about fascism or a comedic piece about spaced-out revolutionaries. The tonal shifts create successful scenes, like during the hilarious DiCaprio moment where he stumbles through a seriously dangerous situation while somehow getting away. In all other moments, the feeling takes on the edge of an ABC made-for-TV show, laughing at the real suffering of real people, which feels like an odd part of this larger theme. Nevertheless, the movie is absolutely stunning. Anderson shot it on this old-school film format that makes every frame look like a painting. Jonny Greenwood’s score mixes piano and drums in a way that keeps your heart racing even during the quieter moments. You can tell Anderson spent serious money making this thing look and sound amazing. What bothers me most about “One Battle After Another” is how it handles race. The movie clearly wants to be on the right side of things, but it sometimes feels like Anderson is playing with serious issues like they’re just plot devices. The revolutionaries are mostly people of color fighting against white supremacists, but the movie spends more time on DiCaprio’s character development than exploring what drives the other fighters. Once the first act is over, Taylor’s Perfidia seems to vanish for the majority of the movie, and frankly, it feels like a waste of talent. Taylor infuses so much fire and intelligence into the character that you really want to see more of her story, and instead, you get countless scenes of DiCaprio being dazed and confused and high. The ending makes an attempt to tie everything together nicely, but quite frankly, it all feels a bit contrived. After spending two and a half hours showing us how messed up everything is, Anderson suddenly wants us to believe that things can work out okay. It’s not that I need every movie to be depressing, but this happy ending feels like it comes from a different film. Despite all my complaints, I kept watching. Anderson knows how to tell a story, even when that story goes in fifty different directions. The movie never feels boring, which is impressive for something this long and scattered. DiCaprio gives one of his funniest performances ever, and the supporting cast keeps everything grounded, even when the plot gets completely insane. “One Battle After Another” isn’t Anderson’s best work, but it’s definitely his most ambitious attempt at making a movie for right now. It’s messy and loud and sometimes offensive, but it’s also brave enough to say that things are really messed up and maybe we should do something about it. In a time when most big movies play it safe, Anderson made something that will definitely make people argue on the way out of the theater. That alone makes it worth seeing, even if you leave feeling as confused as I did.
OUR RATING – A WILD AMERICAN 7