One Battle After Another Review

Paul Thomas Anderson's Latest Masterpiece Reignites the Revolution

By: Marc Kozak

One Battle After Another

Paul Thomas Anderson's Latest Masterpiece Reignites the Revolution

By: Marc Kozak

You'd be forgiven for thinking the guerrilla rebels lurking in the opening scenes of "One Battle After Another" are operating in the 1960s or 1970s; it's a time period most associated with revolution in popular entertainment. Even the movie's source material, Thomas Pynchon's novel Vineland, runs from the height of the '60s hippie movement to Ronald Reagan's re-election in 1984. But some struggles never really end. These opening scenes are set today, hardly distinguishable from similar stories now many decades old, underscoring how little has really changed in this world and how frustrating it can be for those fighting the good fight to pass on the torch to future generations while failing to make things much better for them.

If Pynchon's 1990 novel is about "what America has been doing to itself, to its children, all these many years," writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson has successfully captured that same spirit and transported it to the all-too-familiar modern world, where many fights have been lost but the same, never-ending war is still up for grabs. It's a fist-pumping battle cry, a motivating call to dust ourselves off and never stop getting a second wind, a hopeful reminder of the power of our shared humanity, all wrapped in an action-packed $130 million production featuring one of Hollywood's biggest stars and made by one of the industry's biggest auteurs. The revolution has never looked so good.

Anderson, who may been seen by some as an artist's artist, a high-minded maker of highbrow, capital-A Art, has taken his biggest budget by far and made a wholly accessible, unpretentious, crowd-pleasing blockbuster that starts with a bang and rarely lets up for what never feels like 162 minutes. It's smart without being confusing, political without feeling heavy handed, and rooted in character with some genuinely touching moments of emotional catharsis (bucking a criticism some have lobbed at PTA over the course of his career). It's right up there with the best movies of Anderson's career and it's certainly the one with the biggest shot at being a genuine mainstream hit.

In an opening scene ripped straight from today's headlines, members of the notorious revolutionary group known as French 75 stage a raid on a detention center on the Mexico-U.S. border, where they effortlessly secure the guards and free hundreds of immigrants. The group is led by Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), who talks in delightfully retro slang and confidently struts around barking orders, all while being relentlessly horny for her partner Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a demolitions expert. Perfidia encounters and subdues the facility's leader, Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), and sexually humiliates him so badly that it somehow overrides his racist nature and starts a long psychosexual obsession with Perfidia that isn't necessarily rebuffed.

" It's right up there with the best movies of Anderson's career and it's certainly the one with the biggest shot at being a genuine mainstream hit.  "

Lockjaw relentlessly stalks and eventually captures Perfidia, promising her safety and a new life if she gives up the members of French 75, which she does, seduced by a kind of power she never had, leading to a haunting montage of Lockjaw systematically eliminating almost everyone in the group. Perfidia eventually wises up and runs away, leaving Lockjaw to chase down any final traces of her or French 75, the remaining members of which have scattered to the wind.

We cut to 16 years from now, into a future that seems pretty unchanged, the same battles still in progress. Bob is now a single father, hidden away in the woody community of Baktan Cross, many years into a drug and alcohol problem that has made him increasingly paranoid that there are still people out there who are after him. His teenaged daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) doesn't really believe any of her father's tales of his past, and is told her mother simply passed away a long time ago. Bob is obsessed with protecting Willa, the classic overbearing father who threatens her daughter's male friends and forces her to check in constantly, forever in fear that something bad is going to happen.

And, of course, it does. Colonel Lockjaw has progressed in his career to the point where he is being invited into a group of ultra-rich, ultra-white elites called the Christmas Adventurers Club, a spectacularly racist cabal that seeks to ensure the "purity" of the country (sound familiar?). The onboarding process includes a pretty thorough background check, so Lockjaw needs to eliminate any trace of his relations with Perfidia, which incudes Bob and Willa, who may actually be Lockjaw's daughter.

Thus begins a breathless siege of Baktan Cross, where Lockjaw brings the full force of the government and police to town under the guise of capturing and deporting the many undocumented immigrants. Willa is extracted from a high school dance by former French 75 members, including Deandra (Regina Hall), and Bob suddenly needs to remember old code words and procedures, none of which his drug-addled brain has retained. While he struggles with a revolutionary operator who won't give him the rendezvous point without the right password, he zips in and out of rioting and police hotspots with the assistance of Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro), a preternaturally calm and collected sensei and revolutionary leader in his own right.

Anderson effortlessly juggles all of this activity with complete mastery of pacing, expertly leading the viewer from one chaotic scene to the next, never letting the momentum slow for even a second. The Baktan Cross siege is probably a good 20 minutes, all of which inch you closer and closer to the edge of your seat, the stakes very high and full of danger, but also peppered with several laugh-out-loud moments thanks to DiCaprio’s constant confusion and freak-outs, pitched against del Toro's zen and cool command of the situation.

Things ratchet up another notch after Willa is captured by Lockjaw, leading to the definitive answer to Willa's parentage. Penn gives the best performance of his career as Lockjaw, with an amazing signature walk that looks like he has a literal stick up his ass, and comedy pouring out of every line he gives thanks to his over-the-top seriousness and desperation. Newcomer Chase Infiniti is also an instant attention magnet, and her scenes with DiCaprio provide the movie with its tremendous heart, a connection that pays huge dividends during the spectacular climax, a hilly car chase scene that will go down in history as one of the greats.

Visually, this is PTA at his best, as he and cinematographer Michael Bauman set up the aforementioned climax throughout the film as the road constantly rises and falls like ocean waves, mirroring the reoccurrence of battles over time that come in and out like the tides (as del Toro's sensei quietly points out). Jonny Greenwood’s score is a jumbled pounding of piano keys, notes smashing into each other like cars crashing, providing a sense of anxiety and further fuel to a tonal fire that never really goes out until movie's end. Anderson, as always, has assembled a murderer's row of craftspeople, and the entire movie hums with energy, every production element designed with a sense of great propulsion.

It's all incredible fun, a prime example of what more studios should be doing with their bigger-budget projects. Then again, not all directors are Paul Thomas Anderson, capable of making a movie of the current moment that doesn't feel ridiculous, providing moments of real human feeling amongst eye-widening action, all wrapped up in what can only be described as hope. The battles are never going to stop coming. This is a movie that reminds us why we need to keep fighting.