One Battle After Another, the latest masterpiece from one of the finest filmmakers working today, is a testament to what can be achieved when a major studio puts their money where their mouth is and backs the best. Wielding a budget roughly 4 to 5 times the amount he typically gets for his projects, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson applies the passion and thoughtfulness of his comparatively modest productions to this prodigious IMAX spectacle. It’s a one-of-a-kind epic: larger-than-life while never losing sense of scale, breathlessly-paced but detail-fixated, funny without being frivolous, eerily timely while already feeling timeless. Most importantly, it’s an action movie that isn’t just about car chases and explosions — don’t worry, it has those and they’re outstanding — but also about the exhilaration behind finally taking justified action.
Working within a revolutionary group known as the French 75, explosions expert Pat (Leonardo DiCaprio) enraptures the posse’s leader Perfidia (Teyana Taylor) with his spitfire charm and dedication to the cause. Things seem to be heading toward domestic bliss after the birth of their daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) but along with French 75 cohort Deandra (Regina Hall), Perfidia pushes through with a bank heist that goes sideways in a hurry. Pressured by Col. Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), who’s been on the French 75’s tail for years, Perfidia trades intel for reduced prison time and forces Pat and Willa to go on the run. 16 years later, Pat’s assumed a new identity as Bob Ferguson while he raises his daughter solo and evades Lockjaw’s troops as they try to snuff out each member of the French 75. When Willa goes missing, Bob frantically recruits her karate teacher Sergio (Benicio del Toro) to locate her whereabouts.
This is Paul Thomas Anderson’s second time adapting counterculture novelist Thomas Pynchon, the first resulting in the neo-noir stoner comedy Inherent Vice and One Battle After Another being a loose adaptation of his 1990 book Vineland. The protagonists of the two films ostensibly overlap in certain regards, both being affable burnouts who get in way over their heads, but their respective narratives push them in much different directions. Where Inherent Vice‘s Doc is trapped in a shaggy dog story, Bob Ferguson’s tale is one marked by galvanized purpose and the hope for redemption. At times, it seems there is no obstacle too small to trip Bob up in his conquest to find his imperiled Willa but the failures only makes the victories that much more sweet. Leonardo DiCaprio’s made comedic poetry out of pathetic protagonists before with The Wolf Of Wall Street and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood but this may be his finest work in that category yet.
On the other side of the moral coin, Sean Penn is unforgettable as the often buffoonish but nonetheless formidable colonel dead set on the French 75’s demise. Fitted with a janky gait and anxious oral posturing that would make Roger Stone seethe, he’d come across as a cartoonishly overplayed villain if the real-life inspirations for his character weren’t so similar. After a revelation of a performance in 2023’s A Thousand And One, Teyana Taylor is an absolute force here as a firebrand insurgent who can’t concede to the path of convenience and compliance. In her film debut, Chase Infiniti does a terrific job in balancing a teenager’s desire to distance themselves from their parents with their need for guidance during tremendously scary circumstances. Even in limited roles, James Raterman and D. W. Moffett make the most of their interrogation scenes and sell the menace behind Lockjaw’s relentless operation.
Reteaming with his Licorice Pizza cinematographer Michael Bauman and editor Andy Jurgensen, Paul Thomas Anderson makes every inch of screen and every minute of runtime count. As he did with Boogie Nights, Anderson imbues One Battle After Another with a Scorsese-like sweep that makes every moment feel major. There’s undeniably a grandeur to the proceedings that Anderson hasn’t been afforded the opportunity to attempt until this point in his career. You’ve seen him do sprawling character studies and you’ve seen him do psychological chamber pieces but you’ve never seen anything like the bravura car chase sequence he pulls off late in the film. Warner Bros. has bet big on storytellers this year, evidenced by superb releases from Ryan Coogler and James Gunn over the past several months, and they’ve saved the best for last.
Score – 5/5
More new movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Eleanor The Great, a drama starring June Squibb and Erin Kellyman, telling the story of a 94-year-old Floridian woman who, after a devastating loss, strikes up an unlikely friendship with a 19-year-old student while visiting New York City.
Only coming to theaters is The Strangers: Chapter 2, a horror sequel starring Madelaine Petsch and Gabriel Basso, wherein a couple’s vehicle breaks down on the final day of their cross country road trip, forcing them to take refuge in a remote Airbnb.
Premiering on Apple TV+ is All Of You, a sci-fi romance starring Brett Goldstein and Imogen Poots, about two best friends who harbor an unspoken love for one another, even after a test matches one of them up with their supposed soulmate.
Reprinted by permission of Whatzup