★★★★ (4 out of 4)
Critics are calling “One Battle After Another”—the latest rocket launch from the mad talented Paul Thomas Anderson—the best movie of the year. Really? How do they know since it’s only September? No matter. I fully relate to the passion behind the hot-damn rush to judgement.
PTA, the preferred shorthand for the best high-wire director of his generation, wakes up the sleeping giant of American cinema by giving Oscar winners Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn their most combustible roles in years and trip-wiring every scene in this radical blast of action, fun and fervor like a hidden incendiary device that’s primed to explode.
PTA hasn’t reinvented cinema with “One Battle After Another,” but he’s sure as hell revitalized it with a film that stays alive with daring for nearly three hours. That’s a remarkable feat for an epic from a major studio (Warner Bros.) with a high-risk cost (a reported $130 million) and ambition that won’t quit. Set in an all-too-recognizable here and now, “One Battle After Another” strives to get it all in—a divisive electorate, rampant racism, shuttered abortion clinics, and hate crimes against migrants intensified by ICE raiders in masks. That’s a tall order in a Hollywood mired in the creative quicksand of lazy sequels, prequels and comic-book reboots in constant rotation.
PTA, the preferred shorthand for the best high-wire director of his generation, wakes up the sleeping giant of American cinema by trip-wiring every scene in this radical blast of action, fun and fervor like a hidden incendiary device that’s primed to explode.
The past is prologue for Bob Ferguson (DiCaprio), a former revolutionary who’s spent the last 16 years fogging his paranoid brain with weed and booze. It’s hilarious to see DiCaprio work his own twist on the stoner Jeff Bridges immortalized as the Dude in “The Big Lebowski.” DiCaprio’s flair for comedy shines when Bob’s addled cranium can’t remember a code that might save his life.
PTA flashes back to show us the bomb-throwing insurrectionist in Bob as a member of French 75, a terrorist group hellbent on freeing immigrants from detention centers on the U.S.-Mexico border. Bob’s been laying low since then to protect his teen daughter, Willa (breakout star Chase Infiniti). Prepare to be wowed by Teyana Taylor as Perfidia Beverly Hills, the leader of French 75 who’s Bob’s wife and Willa’s mother. She’s now in custody, leaving Willa and Bob to dodge a relentless enemy.
He’s Col. Steven J. Lockjaw, a steel-jawed martinet given a scary-funny fanaticism by the indisputably great Penn. Lockjaw’s name is right out of Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland,” from which PTA drew inspiration in the same way he used Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel “Oil” to carve out his masterpiece with “There Will Be Blood.”
Perfidia’s call for Black liberation both alarms and attracts the colonel, who forces her into a sexual submission that brings Willa’s paternity into question. How long has this been going on? Meanwhile the colonel fights to become a member of a white supremacist secret society absurdly dubbed the Christmas Adventurers.
The film’s bracing blend of giggles and gravitas is distilled in the image of a very pregnant Perfida fiercely firing an AK-47. Taylor’s gut-punch of a performance cuts right to the core of the film’s take on the threat of violence on family.
“One Battle After Another” feels personal for PTA, whose wife and four children are mixed race and prey to the same toxic forces that Bob and Willa are running from in an America losing hold on its constitutional freedoms. Their flight for freedom reaches danger point in a climactic car chase over sandy dunes that is spectacular in every sense of the word as PTA and the wizardly VistaVision camerawork of Michael Bauman and the jazzy jolt of a score by Jonny Greenwood combine to create a miracle of pure cinema pow.
For PTA, it’s been one battle after another to take home Oscar gold for landmarks that include, in addition to the peerless “There Will Be Blood,” “Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia,” “The Master” and “Phantom Thread.” And PTA’s affinity for actors hits a new high-water mark.
Every member of the cast comes up aces, including a wickedly mischievous Benicio del Toro as martial arts sensei Sergio St. Carlos, who uses his business as a front to smuggle in immigrants, and Regina Hall as Deandra, an on-the-run French 75 alum ready to help Willa no matter the cost.
Never one for sermonizing, PTA remains a master of show over tell, as young rebels marshal their forces and Willa—on the run with Bob—learns to become her own woman. With all the breakneck action, “One Battle After Another” is above all a family film that celebrates the ties that bind, wherever you find them.
Heist caper? Revenge thriller? Breathless chase? “One Battle After Another” is all those things. That it also holds up a dark comic mirror to the way we live and screw up now without forgetting to add a fragile lifeline to hope is what makes it a PTA joint. And whether or not this essential filmmaker finally wins his Oscar flowers, PTA sets a new gold standard for movie lovers eager to see him soar—no bull, no limits.