The are, as I see it, two things I can bring up about the latest Paul Thomas Anderson movie, One Battle After Another. First, there’s been some political backlash against the movie coming from the American rightwing. Second, the movie has been characterized as an action thriller. For the first, it is not hard to see why: the protagonists of the movie are leftwing radicals while the villains are anti-immigrant military types. I will only say in my intro that I deliberately used “protagonists” because many of these radical characters don’t come across as particularly or traditionally heroic.
As for the other, well, I suppose this movie would be what happened if Paul Thomas Anderson made an action movie, but it’s not, like, Die Hard or anything along those lines. I’d say it’s more funny than anything else, and the audience I saw the movie with found many good laughs along the way.
In an unstated year, the leftwing revolutionary group the French 75 are pulling a run against a migrant detention camp when Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) gains the attention of the camp’s leader, Captain Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn). As it is, she is starting a relationship with her partner, demolitions expert “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio), a man whose revolutionary spirit may be a bit questionable depending on whom you ask. When Perfidia gives birth to a baby girl, she doesn’t for a second stop her revolutionary activities, leading to a bank job gone bad, Lockjaw’s closer attention to the French 75, a number of arrests and deaths for the members of the group, and Pat going into hiding as “Bob” with the baby now “Willa.”
16 years later, and Bob, as he is known for most of the movie, is still in hiding, having long gotten into drinking, smoking pot, turning his brain to mush, and generally being paranoid while his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) is doing well in school and trying her best to be a normal teenager despite Bob’s best efforts. Lockjaw, now a Colonel, has a chance to join a secret society of right-wing white supremacists, but there’s a chance something from his past encounters with Perfidia could derail all that. That leads to Lockjaw’s stepping up his efforts to bring down the remainder of the French 75, and his attempts bring him to the town Bob and Willa are hiding out in, leading further to Bob’s having to pull himself out of his stoned state and remember stuff he’s long since forgot while Willa goes into hiding herself, all while Lockjaw is after the lot of them. About the only person Bob can rely on at the moment is Willa’s martial arts instructor, the remarkably chill Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro). Can Bob and Willa find each other?
I said above that for all that leftwing radicals are the movie’s protagonists, they certainly aren’t very heroic. I think that stems more from Anderson’s general preference for making movies about messy, complicated human beings. Bob, the name DiCaprio’s character is actually listed under in the closing credits, is not much of a hero, more of a frantic observer for everything going on around him. Also, given the long lead time for making any movie, if this movie is particularly relevant to things happening right now, I’d say that’s probably more a coincidence than anything else. The issues, certainly, are very old, but this is a movie where Lockjaw is a member of the military, but also seems to be working with local cops to enforce the law or something. The movie was inspired by a Thomas Pynchon novel set in 1984, so make of anything about leftwing revolution here with what you will. It’s not a bad assumption to assume Anderson is siding with the radicals, but their heroism or general competence may be up for debate since the most effective protagonist is del Toro’s Sergio, and he’s not part of the French 75, just a remarkably unflappable man who can get things done far better than, well, pretty much anyone else.
That’s not a slam, by the by. One Battle After Another is a legitimately great movie. It’s just one where the ostensible hero, Bob, is a clumsy doofus who runs around with a bad man-bun in his bathrobe trying to remember how to do anything while other people seem to be more on the ball, the worst characters belong to a group that seems to be particularly enamored by Christmas. There are moments of great tension, and Lockjaw is a great villain even as Penn screws his face into all kinds of bizarre expressions whenever he opens his mouth to say anything. It’s basically like I saw above: this is exactly what an action thriller would look like if the man behind There Will Be Blood or Licorice Pizza decided to make one.
Grade: A
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