One Battle After Another Expertly Blends Absurdity and Stunning Action

There are no bad Paul Thomas Anderson movies. And while lately there has been a bit of ebb and flow after There Will Be Blood and between unparalleled masterpieces like 2012’s The Master and 2017's Phantom Thread and lighter but excellent fare in 2014's Inherent Vice and 2021's Licorice Pizza, you can't deny PTA’S artistry and style. That seems to be the guiding force of One Battle After Another, which ranks high on the upper echelon of his work.

Despite being worked on for two decades, One Battle After Another feels uncomfortably timely or unfortunately prescient. The film centers around members of a revolutionary group called The French 75, specifically Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) and Ghetto Bob/Rocketman (Leonardo DiCaprio) who run around California releasing illegal immigrants from detention camps, blowing things up, robbing banks to fund their missions, and various other acts to battle fascism, which is embodied in the personage of Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn). Their stories interlock and come to a head when their decisions tear a rift through The French 75, propelling Ghetto Bob and his new born daughter Charlene into hiding.

This section of the film immediately hearkens back to 70's style filmmaking. From the heavy grain on the film stock to the tight close ups to the pacing, it all meshes together into an almost grindhouse film that is elevated to arthouse. Feels weird to say that, especially with the recent backlash on elevated horror, but it works so damn well here. The closest thing I would liken it to is a pop version of postmodernism.

The rest of the film jumps forward 15 years where we meet with the new cast of characters. Beyond the aforementioned leads you have people like Sergio St. Cloud, hilariously portrayed by Benicio del Toro, balancing life as a martial arts sensei and expert at helping migrants in the US, a secret cabal of racists with a name I won't spoil who let loose a preppy fixer to alleviate some unwanted pressure, and a group of former revolutionary who, once again, I refuse to spoil their names or newfound callings. Before all this conspiratorial mess comes crashing down, we do get a brief moment to "relax" and meet Ghetto Pat/Rocketman, now Bob Ferguson, and his teenaged daughter Charlene, portrayed by an incredible Chase Infiniti, now Willa in their new lives.

Now to the action. Those final 2/3rds are a series of elongated cat and mouse games between several characters that is as thrilling as anything put to film in the last several decades. Every scene has this kinetic energy that refuses to dissipate as Bob haphazardly evades Lockjaw and his forces while Willa learns of her families origins as she is separated from her father. This all culminates in a breathtaking final set piece that is masterfully handled.

Another thing One Battle After Another does incredibly well is being inspired by Thomas Pynchon's Vineland rather than directly adapting it. If you've read the book, you can definitely see characters, motivations, and even absurd plot lines lifted directly from the surprisingly digestible tome. But ultimately the story is much more streamlined and despite its complexities, is very easy to follow as it focuses so heavily on Bob and Willa’s fleeing from the overwhelming breadth of Lockjaw’s blind retribution.

That is not to say that the intensity of the revolutionary acts or the militaristic forces outweighs the other big thing that makes the film great: the comedy. One Battle After Another is a satire and a very, very funny one as it successfully has its cake and eats it too. It's wild and goofy with moments of anachronism and absurdism (the maybe takes place now more or less) standing shoulder to shoulder with plenty of serious elements to ground the whole thing, making the juxtaposition of the two contrast heavily and taking the inherent hilarity in crazy names to a new level. If you're not cackling at a group of fascist racists calling themselves...I still won't spoil it..., then you're taking the movie way too seriously (or don't know that the real life Proud Boys take their name from a song cut from the Aladdin movie that was later included in the musical version.)

Acting wise everyone here is doing top tier work. Leonardo DiCaprio has allowed himself to take on roles of aging out of their element characters (see Once Upon A Time in Hollywood) and is excelling at it. Sean Penn is bored online unrecognizable as his face is in a constant grimace, his hair cut in such a way that you can't help but think fascist, and his overall being feeling imposing as he struts around like Vince McMahon or nefarious Popeye. Chase Infinity, whose real name seems plucked for the mind of Pynchon himself and could frankly be an apt name for her character, is maybe giving the best performance in the movie. She truly embodies the scared teenager being swept up in this conspiratorial plot. The supporting actors like Benicio del Toro and Teyana Taylor steal their scenes while more subdued choices from Regina Hall lend some much appreciated gravity to the film.

While One Battle After Another may not be as dense as it's source material, it still manages a complex array of themes that I'm sure every viewer will take something from this film. Whether it's the political criticisms, the father/daughter dynamics, the consequences of peoples past defining them or being the thing they need to let go; there are just so many themes running around that it's impossible to focus on just one. PTA hasn't made a bad movie yet, and One Battle After Another is another notch in the masterpiece column.