Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson | Written by Anderson, “inspired by” Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland | 141 min | ▲▲▲▲
What we’ve got here is a new chaotic, action-packed epic from PTA. We haven’t seen anything close to this from him since Inherent Vice. That tracks since Anderson’s 2014 picture was also adapted from a Pynchon book, though this is a different kind of animal, inspired by movies like Running On Empty or The East, along with more comedic projects like the forgotten Robin Williams picture, The Survivors.
What it does really well is sustain a bonkers pace over its running time — this is a long movie that does not drag, and if all that rushing around also keeps it from cohering, maybe that’s the price Anderson was willing to pay. It’s shot in VistaVision, a film stock that apparently makes the image look great whether you shoot wide or tight, and it’s got a fantastic score from sometime Radiohead member Jonny Greenwood, who dramatically changes the sound from orchestral swooning to atonal skronk depending on the demands of the chapter. It’s terrific, and the movie still has room for a perfectly chosen needle drop of Steely Dan’s “Dirty Work.”
Anderson has delivered a frequently exciting, gorgeous to see and hear, comedy thriller — what’s maybe best about it is how he paints a vivid portrait of America as it is right now, a place where white supremacists are embedded in the privatized, militarized police carrying semi-automatic machine guns on the streets, while multiethnic groups of people, sometimes recent immigrants, are doing whatever they can to survive in poverty. What it also paints is a political landscape where almost everyone is barely competent, with cheesy handles and outrageous personal issues.
The first 45 minutes of the film is set in the near past, amongst a left-wing group of radicals fighting to disrupt the immigration camps on the southern border of the United States. Among them is the hardcore Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) and her guy, Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio). Hot on their trail is a total nutcase, Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), who’s also obsessed with Perfidia, a fact she keeps to herself but seems to enjoy when alone with Lockjaw. Perfidia gets pregnant and things go poorly for the radicals — amongst them are Wood Harris, Alana Haim, Shayna McHayle, and Regina Hall. We then jump 16 years into the future and Bob is a paranoid pothead with a teenage daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti, terrific), he’s raising alone. Suffice to say, his past comes back to haunt their family.
I’ve been upfront about my ambivalence with Leonardo DiCaprio, an actor who really delivers when allowed to get ugly, like here and here, but too often feels like a cypher. Here he’s the bland white guy in the opening segment — committed to the cause but never doing anything as intense as the rest of the crew. In the rest of the movie he’s motivated solely by his love for his daughter, but also kind of an annoying fuck-up — there’s not much of an arc to this guy. This while Sean Penn’s right-wing obsessive Lockjaw is a clown, a bundle of tics that makes him plenty entertaining to watch, but more a cartoon than an actual person — though, I suppose, if you look at the unqualified people running the administration right now the States, maybe he’s not so outrageous in comparison. (One Battle After Another would make for an interesting double-bill with another of this year’s tonally awkward pictures about polarized America, Eddington.)
All to say, the two guys in the centre of this are the source of a lot of the humour in the picture, but they aren’t actually that funny, and neither is the script. The inherent goofiness isn’t so much satiric as it is just… plain goofy. While Anderson’s confidence with the actors and camera movement never fails to impress, his management of the tone in his film is all over the map. It leaves the supporting cast, like Regina Hall, to do a lot of the emotional lifting. Anderson does manage to give Benicio Del Toro one of his best roles in recent years as Sensei Sergio St. Carlos, someone Bob can turn to when things get rough, someone who always has a plan, which Bob barely does.
The criterati are losing their minds over the this one and while the enthusiasm is easy to understand, this movie needs just a little less of the shaggy dog about it to approach the masterpiece that some are naming it.
UPDATE, 28/09/25
This is what’s great about having your own blog — you can go back and make changes:
It’s been about 72 hours of letting this movie sink in, as well as reading and hearing more of the reactions to it. I’m still in the camp of critics (and I recognize it’s a small one) for whom this movie won’t be the year’s best — the comedic/satiric aspects remain a challenge — but it’s moved up the list for me the more I’ve thought about it, and earns an extra half-triangle up at the top.
Also, full marks to Nova Scotian activist and poet, El Jones, who appeared on CBC Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud to talk about this film. She remarked on a part of the picture’s texture that I should’ve paid more attention to — how it forefronts race, the sexualization of Perfidia Beverly Hills in the first act, and Lockjaw’s need to control her. The subtext about the relationship between white, right-wing America and the Black body, that’s a strong and relevant point.
All to say, I’m just going to have to go see One Battle After Another a second time. Maybe I’ll stop by here again to offer more notes.
