Josh Reviews One Battle After Another

One Battle After Another stars Leonardo DiCaprio as “Ghetto” Pat, now living in hiding as Bob Ferguson.  Bob used to be a left-wing revolutionary, a member of the “French 75”, but now he’s living off the grid and raising his teenage daughter Willa.  (Willa’s mother, Perfidia Beverly Hills, was unwilling to give up her revolutionary fight after Willa was born, and wound up getting arrested.)  Bob’s fervor for protecting Willa and keeping her living a life without any sort of digital footprint has started to look like unfounded paranoia to Willa, until the day Bob’s past catches up with them in. the form of Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn).  Lockjaw had been obsessed with Willa’s mother Perfidia since before Willa was born, and when he finally manages to find and catch Willa, Bob begins an increasingly desperate quest to rescue her.  But Willa is not exactly helpless herself…

One Battle After Another was written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, loosely based on Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland.  Paul Thomas Anderson is unquestionably one of the most talented writers/directors working today.  I’ve loved all of his films, with The Master and Inherent Vice being at the top of my list.

One Battle After Another is a masterpiece.  I was riveted throughout the film’s considerable run-time.  (The film is about two hours and 45 minutes long, but I thought it flew by.)  The film is intense and funny and moving.  It’s a rollicking adventure story and at the same time a fiercely angry movie with a lot to say about our world today and the mistreatment of immigrants and people of color here in the United States.

The performances are extraordinary.  Leonardo DiCaprio is, of course, phenomenal as Pat/Bob.  I like seeing Mr. DiCaprio play a disheveled, distraught dad; this is an interesting new lane for this handsome movie-star actor.  (I loved his Lebowski-like bathrobe!!  By the way, I was intrigued and surprised to look back at my review of Inherent Vice and compare aspects of that film to The Big Lebowski.  PTA must love Lebowski!)  Mr. DiCaprio is able to nail the humorous beats of this role — this is a very funny performance — while at the same time always maintaining Bob as a real human being and preserving the character’s dignity.  Bob’s pain and mounting desperation feels very real, which anchors the film in strong emotional stakes.  At the same time, scenes like the one in which Bob manages to remember the number to call to reach help from his former resistance unit, but can’t remember the password to confirm his identity, are absolutely hilarious; comedic gold, and Mr. DiCaprio is so good.

Teyana Taylor is riveting as Perfidia Beverly Hills.  The film has an interesting structure in which the first half hour or so is basically just a long prologue set sixteen years before the main story.  But this winds up being so important in developing the tangled backstory of the film’s main characters, which informs everything that follows.  This opening is also critical for allowing us to get to know Perfidia, and Ms. Taylor delivers a barnstorming performance, bursting out of the screen with her magnetism.

Sean Penn has had an amazing career, and there was a long time in which I think he was held up as an actor’s actor, one of the best.  But he hasn’t performed much on screen in recent years.  His work here is a fierce reminder of his skill.  It’s a joy to watch him cut loose as Lockjaw.  This is a very strange performance; Mr. Penn makes some bold choices, but I thought it totally worked.  The result is extremely memorable; Lockjaw is a powerful on-screen presence and a scary villain.

Chase Infiniti delivers a star-making performance as Willa.  She’s tremendous, perfectly charting the journey of this young woman who is believable as a normal teenage girl who then has to draw upon an internal well of strength to carry her through her perilous journey in the film.  I can’t wait to see what Ms. Infiniti does next.  I think she has the potential to have an incredible career ahead of her.

Then there is Benicio del Toro, who steals the movie away from all of those incredible actors I’ve listed so far!  Mr. del Toro plays “Sensei”, Willa’s martial arts teacher who a desperate Bob calls upon for aid, only to discover that Sensei is running, as he describes it, “a little Latino Harriet Tubman situation” out of his apartment building.  I love this character!  Sensei is brave and heroic, and hilariously deadpan.  Mr. del Toro delivers every line perfectly.  I loved this character instantly and enjoyed every moment he was on-screen.  (I wish we’d gotten one more scene with him at the end, to let us know what happened next for his character!)

Regina Hall is terrific in a supporting role as Deandra, a French 75 member who attempts to aid Willa when Lockjaw closes in on her.  I loved seeing Alana Haim (who was amazing in PTA’s film Licorice Pizza) back in another PTA film in a small supporting role as French 75 member Mae West.  Wood Harris (who played Avon Barksdale on The Wire), Paul Grimstad, and Shayna McHayle are all great as other French 75 members.  Tony Goldwyn (who I will always know best as Neil Armstrong in From the Earth to the Moon), Kevin Tighe (who I will always know best as Anthony Cooper on Lost), and SNL writer Jim Downey are all wonderfully menacing as scumbag members of the white supremacists in the Christmas Adventurers Club.

It’s fascinating to watch this movie that paints a picture of a left-wing revolutionary movement in the United States that never really existed.  PTA has crafted a world that isn’t quite our own, and at the same time feels like one tiny step removed from our present day reality.  Watching Colonel Lockjaw use the United States military to hunt down Latino immigrants (legal or otherwise) feels scary and plausible.

This could be potentially depressing, but as I’ve already noted, the film is very funny.  I’m so impressed by how PTA is able to weave the humor and the horror together.  So when we see a group of wealthy white supremacists who manipulate the levels of society to advance their hateful aims, it’s scary.  But it’s also funny when we watch these evil men, who call themselves the Christmas Adventurers Club, greet one another by saying “Hail St. Nick”!  And the ending is satisfyingly uplifting.  I won’t spoil it, but the final scene is great, and the choice of scoring it to the song “American Girl” was absolutely perfect.

Speaking of the music, the film’s score by Jonny Greenwood is extraordinary and extremely memorable.  The piano music feels unique and it manages to be both jaunty and incredibly stress-inducing in equal parts.  I loved it!

I want to emphasize that while this film has rich themes and quite a lot to say, this is not a boring drama or a polemic!  This is an adventure/chase film, and PTA keeps things moving along at a tight clip.  The film also gives us one of the best car chases I have seen on-screen in years!  The end of the movie features an incredible chase along a single California road that goes up and down along a series of hills.  (Some online checking after seeing the film informs me that this was filmed on Texas Dip, in Borrego Springs, California.)  Watching the cars crest in and out of view as they rise and fall along these hills is vertiginous — it felt like being in the ocean and having waves of water crash over and under us.  It’s an extraordinary piece of movie-making (and one of many reasons why this movie is worth watching in theaters on the big screen).

By the way, while this third act car chase is the sequence that most everyone who has seen this film is talking about, it is far from the film’s only riveting action sequence!  I also have to highlight the bank robbery gone wrong in the film’s first half-hour.  I’ve seen a lot of botched bank robberies in movies over the years, but this is a fantastic new spin on this potentially familiar type of sequence.  PTA throws the viewer into a tense, “you are there” sequence that I found captivating.

One Battle After Another is a phenomenal movie.  If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it and encourage you to find it in a movie theatre while you still can.

(Before I end, I do think it’s worth pointing out that I was intrigued to listen to Van Lathan on The Big Picture podcast on the Ringer Network.  Mr. Lathan raised some serious objections to the depictions of the African American women in the film.  While this film was clearly intended to champion African American women — the story focuses on several strong and memorable African American woman in leading roles — Mr. Lathan had objections with the execution.  I thought his position was well-worth considering.  This podcast is worth a listen.  The hosts, Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins, had posted a previous podcast expressing how head-over-heels in love with the film they both were, as I was!  That’s also a fun episode if you want to listen to it!)

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