One Battle After Another Dir: Paul Thomas Anderson (13th Floor Film Review)
Somewhere between revolutionary satire, absurdist road movie, and a reminder that family can be whatever you choose to make it, lies Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another—a film so strange it shouldn’t work. And yet, it might just be a masterpiece.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti.
Adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s revolutionary fever dream Vineland, this movie pulses with heart, delivers laughs that sneak up on you, and features what might be Sean Penn’s best performance since, well, ever.
Anderson is no stranger to mixing genres like a mad scientist—remember Boogie Nights? Magnolia? There Will Be Blood? He’s back at it, flexing his comedy muscles in a film that somehow makes militant revolution look like a dysfunctional family reunion.
We kick off at the Mexico-US border where a radical group called the French 75 (because if you are going to name a resistance movement after a cocktail, why settle for something obvious like, I don’t know… “Molotov” perhaps?) stages a chaotic mission to free some immigrants from processing limbo. Leading the charge is the fiery Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor, who lights up every scene she’s in like a human flamethrower).
Enter Captain Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), a man so wound tight you’d think he was designed by IKEA to snap at the slightest provocation. Sporting tee-shirts a size too small—picture an angry pigeon trying to look menacing—Penn owns Lockjaw’s twitchy intensity with the kind of physical commitment that makes you both laugh and wince.
Lockjaw’s obsession with Perfidia, sparked by a volatile first meeting, is equal parts disturbing and… well, oddly hilarious in a dark, “this-can’t-actually-be-happening” kind of way. Meanwhile, Perfidia’s partner-in-chaos, “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio), dubbed Rocket Man because of his penchant for explosives, keeps the French 75’s operations, erm… ticking… along.
What follows is a wild series of captures, betrayals, and a witness protection deal that throws many of Perfidia’s fellow revolutionaries directly under an oncoming number 17 bus.
Fast-forward sixteen years and Pat—now with a new identity as stay-at-home dad Bob Ferguson—juggles raising his teenage daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti in her film debut) through a drug and booze-fuelled haze while trying not to completely lose his revolutionary edge… or his mind.
His uneasy retirement from active rebellion is interrupted when he is alerted to imminent danger from their old adversary by former comrade Deandra, (Regina Hall), who has pre-emptively extracted a bewildered Willa from her high school dance, and, following the Whoopi Goldberg guide to evading bad guys, whisked her away to… hide in a nunnery.
The movie really hits its stride when Bob attempts to reconnect with his old crew, only to realise his memory is as unreliable as a politician’s promise. Cue one of the funniest scenes, whereby an increasingly desperate Bob is confronted by the ultimate call-centre jobsworth demanding the answer to the convoluted password question that our anti-hero was supposed to have memorised 16 years prior.
“I’ve fried my brain since then,” says an increasingly desperate Bob, “I have abused drugs and alcohol for 30 years.”
This fails to move the call-centre Karen (or Darren). “I would have thought that you would have paid more attention to the revolutionary text” may not be helpful to our beleaguered Bob, but it is very funny.
Meanwhile, Bob’s not flying solo. Enter Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro), local karate teacher/sensei and part-time saviour of illegal immigrants—basically the Swiss Army knife of the underground. Their buddy-cop-style banter is a highlight, with del Toro delivering deadpan wisdom while Bob attempts what might be the clumsiest leap from a moving car ever captured on film. Spoiler: it’s glorious.
As Bob scrambles to rendezvous with his daughter and old allies, chaos ensues. The pacing is relentless, and you’d best hold on tight because this rollercoaster doesn’t come with a seatbelt.
Back on the villain side, Lockjaw is desperately trying to impress an elite (and deeply unhinged) white nationalist group called… the Christmas Adventurers Club. Because nothing says “holiday spirit” like racist bros in matching sweaters. Unfortunately for Willa, a big question mark over her true parentage is standing squarely in his way—an angry pigeon who will stop at nothing to secure himself a place in the white supremacist frat boy club.
Sean Penn’s Lockjaw manages to walk that fine line between cartoon villain and tragic misfit. By the end, you might even feel a smidge of sympathy for him—the kid who desperately wants in on the “cool kids” club, even though said club is composed of racial-purity-obsessed psychopaths. Everybody needs friends, right?
Although perhaps he should’ve just taken Groucho Marx’s advice and skipped the whole membership thing.
Ultimately, it is the relationship between Bob and Willa that is the beating heart centering all of the mayhem. DiCaprio and Infiniti have a sweet and believable chemistry, capturing the love underneath the mutual exasperation that is the universal language of fathers and their on-the-cusp-of-adulthood daughters.
One Battle After Another isn’t a movie you analyse so much as one you experience. Strap in, let the mayhem wash over you, and enjoy the wild ride.
And it really is a ride. Case in point: a marvellously filmed chase on an undulating road at high speed, which puts the audience so close to being in the driver’s seat that it could easily induce motion sickness.
DiCaprio, Penn, and del Toro are the holy trinity in this madcap race to a wholly satisfying conclusion. What more could you ask for in a movie to kick off the Southern Hemisphere summer?
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
Jo Barry
One Battle After Another is in cinemas now. Click here for tickets and showtimes
