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Review: ‘One Battle After Another’ is an absolute masterpiece
Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another" is the director's most entertaining movie ever, an alchemic mix of political intrigue, thrilling action, and giddy comedy with Leonardo DiCaprio at the center of it all.
Leonardo DiCaprio, the definition of an untouchable A-List movie star for close to three decades, has officially entered his loser era.
Since 2019, DiCaprio’s only roles have been a washed-up B-movie actor (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”), a nerdy scientist (“Don’t Look Up”), a useful galoot (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), and now, in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” a weed-smoking, bathrobe-wearing paranoiac.
Matching DiCaprio’s restless energy across a relentless 162 minutes, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” is the director’s most purely entertaining film to date, an alchemic mix of political intrigue, thrilling action, and giddy comedy, all undergirded by some of the most technically spectacular filmmaking in recent memory.
DiCaprio’s rural single dad Bob Ferguson has a good reason to be paranoid: As we learn in a tense, exhilarating prologue, Bob is (or was) a bomb-chucking activist, part of a group of domestic terrorists called the French 75.
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The organization is led by Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor, “A Thousand and One”), a magnetic and militant Black woman who bends the universe to her will and has Bob under her spell. As the group leads an armed raid to free migrants from an immigration detention facility, Perfidia locates – and then sexually torments – their commanding officer, Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn).
This incendiary opening is sure to spark conversation at a time when companies like Disney and Apple are pulling politically sensitive entertainment from their roster. But this opening scene is a mere prelude to the film’s real story, which takes place in the present day, some 16 years later.
So who was President during this bomb-throwing raid that — depending on how literal the film’s definition of “present day” is — happened in the waning days of George W. Bush’s presidency or the earliest days of President Obama? Anderson, who loosely based “One Battle After Another” on Thomas Pynchon’s Vietnam and Reagan era-spanning novel “Vineland,” posits it doesn’t matter.
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As DiCaprio’s character makes clear during a conversation with his daughter’s history teacher, the story of America is one of rebellion and subjugation. No matter who’s in office, police are gonna police, and activists are gonna activate.
Yes, you read that right: Bob, who spent years building bombs to blow up banks and government buildings, is now a stay-at-home dad to Willa (Chase Infiniti). She has a vague notion of what her dad once did, and knows that her mother, Perfidia, is no longer in the picture. More than anything, Willa is annoyed by her dad’s inability to leave the past behind. Forcing her to memorize complicated code phrases in order to determine who she can trust is one thing, but not letting her have a cell phone? She’s 16, for crying out loud!
As it turns out, Bob’s paranoia wasn’t so delusional after all, and the past does come back to haunt them in ways we won’t spoil here. Faced by a rapidly advancing enemy, Bob must shake off years of rust — and reactivate the parts of his brain he hasn’t totally fried — to ensure his and Willa’s safety.
“One Battle After Another” is a rare film in Anderson’s oeuvre. For a director who prefers to set his films in the past, “One Battle” is a film that is completely of this moment. It’s also the most action-packed of Anderson’s filmography by some distance; there is rarely a slow moment across the film’s runtime, and thanks to the director’s choice to film in VistaVision — a towering film format that has rarely been used since the 1960s — every thrilling moment feels larger than life.
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At the same time, there are many welcome echoes of Anderson’s past masterpieces. Perhaps the closest analogue on a surface level is Anderson’s “Inherent Vice,” another adaptation of a Pynchon novel that centers an adversarial relationship between a hippie burnout (Joaquin Phoenix) and a stern, clench-jawed cop (Josh Brolin). The relationships between both Bob and Perfidia and Perfidia and Lockjaw also bring to mind the complex, thorny power dynamics at the center of Anderson’s “The Master” and “Phantom Thread.”
DiCaprio is transcendent, a shambling mess of a man who tries (and often fails) to adjust to his current reality. One setpiece in particular, in which DiCaprio’s raving madman stands in stark contrast to the radiant calm of Willa’s karate instructor (Benicio del Toro), is one of the best scenes of the year. This is the best bathrobe acting since Jeff Bridges in “The Big Lebowski,” and the best bathrobe acting while holding a loaded gun since Alfred Molina in Anderson’s own “Boogie Nights.”
Equally good is Penn, turning in one of his best performances in decades as the tormented Colonel. His feelings about the rebellion, Perfidia, and about Black women in general are complicated. But one thing Lockjaw is certain of is that the best way to deal with those feelings is to eradicate them using the considerable might of the United States military.
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Warner Bros. has made a big bet on Anderson and “One Battle After Another.” After losing Christopher Nolan to Universal, the studio has followed the Nolan playbook, giving Anderson an unlimited budget and allowing him to revive a film format that died 70 years ago. It’s a canny part of studios’ larger strategy to eventize the theatrical experience, whether through sing-along versions of films like “Wicked” or by courting film bros who will geek out over aspect ratios and IMAX lasers.
Luckily for us, the Coolidge Corner Theatre is one of four theaters in the world that will be projecting “One Battle After Another” in Anderson’s preferred VistaVision. If you’re running into sold-out shows, Somerville Theatre’s 70 mm film print is a great alternative as well. One thing you don’t want to do, however, is wait until “One Battle After Another” hits HBO Max many months from now. It’s a singular experience that fully deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible.
Rating: **** (out of 4)
“One Battle After Another” is now playing in theaters.
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