ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER Review

There is a moment in Paul Thomas Anderson’s tenth feature film, One Battle After Another, where Leonardo DiCaprio’s retired revolutionary Bob Ferguson is on the run in search of his daughter, Chase Infiniti’s Willa Ferguson. Bob is having a difficult time finding an electrical outlet where he can charge his phone so that he might make a call allowing him to obtain the necessary information concerning a rendezvous point where he will hopefully be reunited with Willa. Thanks to Benicio del Toro’s Sensei Sergio, Bob finally finds a working outlet and proclaims multiple times, “I have power!” It’s a simple sentiment that in the context of the scene is celebratory and speaking specifically to Bob getting one step closer to finding his child, but because DiCaprio chooses to repeat the words more than once they inherently bear a significance that gives way to consideration of what these words sound like on their own, without the context in which they’re spoken. Without context, it is easy to assume that a statement such as “I have power” is more a proclamation than something meant to express happiness which is Anderson's point: the noise is a distraction from the intent. 

One Battle After Another, based loosely on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland”, is a movie all about how power works; about how much of civilization is built on the whims and desires of power-hungry men who both seek to shape the world in accordance with their own concepts of truth as well as eradicate any reminders of their own shame. This is true for characters on both sides of history in Anderson’s film and the writer/director, despite making it clear who he believes are the good guys and who are the villains, does not let any one character off the hook. One Battle After Another could just as easily be seen as a cynical takedown of those in power as it can a hopeful rallying cry for change in a world gone awry but whatever lens one chooses to view it through, there’s no denying the big, broad, bombastic, and most importantly - bizarrely beguiling - entertainment value Anderson is able to deliver alongside his countless ideas.

Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) escorts Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) from his own post in a show of both seduction and power.
Photo by Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures - © Warner Bros. Pictures

Scouring the layers and tremendous thought clearly implemented in both Anderson’s adaptation as well as his collaborative execution, what bubbles to the top is the complicated (to say the least) dynamic between Bob and his daughter. It’s not only that Infiniti’s Willa has hit her teen years complete with independent thought and a more extensive understanding of how the world around her works but mostly that these developments contradict Bob’s constant state of paranoia. Bob, who in his own youth was a revolutionary whom we see participate in the freeing of migrants from detention facilities and actively blowing up power grids for the underground organization known as the French 75, has more or less checked out of society since going into hiding with Willa. Sixteen years have passed and Bob freely admits to having fried his brain on drugs and booze as DiCaprio’s surprisingly tender (given the circumstances) performance seems to indicate Bob’s awareness that Willa is at her breaking point; no longer viewing him as a father who cares about her above anything but more as the sole reason she isn’t allowed to do anything. This moment in time is also easily viewed as a breaking point because the film sets in motion Sean Penn’s Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw tracking down Bob and Willa after he was both involved with and duped by Bob’s girlfriend and Willa’s mother, Perfidia Beverly Hills (a looming and luminous Teyana Taylor).

They say youth is wasted on the young, this idea that while young people are full of energy and ideals they often lack the wisdom and perspective to use these traits effectively while conversely by the time wisdom and perspective set in the energy to champion such ideals has been all but drained. Incorporating the use of such an extreme example such as a group of revolutionaries emphasizes the idea of how this aphorism is not only true but serves as good reason for why each generation seems to fail the next. Yes, Bob is a self-proclaimed bum who barely remembers the call signs of his cohorts much less his original motivations for placing his life on the course it’s taken, but he’s not a man without admirable priorities and Willa being at the top of that list - he was smitten with her from the beginning - has given him, if not doubts, at least reasons to consider said incentives as each obstacle he bumbles his way through in order to try and save her opens his eyes all the more to not only how much his mission failed, but how much worse it’s made life for what’s become his sole reason for living.

Willa (Chase Infiniti) is surprised by the appearance of one of her father's fellow militants in Deandra (Regina Hall) at her school dance.
Photo by Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures - © Warner Bros. Pictures

It is this level of introspection crossed with the broad genre spaces the film resides in while sprinkling in countless details so uniquely funny and memorable that makes One Battle After Another so accessible yet still wholly a Paul Thomas Anderson film. The character - and details around and within said character - that symbolize and summarize this best is that of Penn’s Lockjaw. In broad strokes, he’s the villain of the piece yet when we get into his sexual quirks, sense of style (or lack thereof), and general posture we are served the specifics that make both the character and Penn’s performance monumental in their fields, while it is his aspirations of joining what is hilariously named the “Christmas Adventurer’s Club” made up of good sports like Tony Goldwyn, James Downey, Kevin Tighe, D.W. Moffett, and John Hoogenakker that put this squarely in the realm of an Anderson film. The first half hour to forty minutes of the film offers a foreword of sorts that is far more solemn than what remains in the final two hours, but it is the tone Anderson establishes in his introduction that paints both the sincerity and despair of DiCaprio's pre-Bob Pat and Perfidia's situation as contrasted by the shameless vulgarity on which Lockjaw operates and further, will prey upon them with. This is a difficult scale to balance despite life often mirroring such drastic turns in spirit and attitude. Movies must oftentimes remain consistent across style, theme, and temper to feel cohesive in their drive towards accomplishing an objective but what makes each of Anderson's films so defiantly his own is how he lives in the unclean moments of life. 

In the third act of the film there is a point at which Willa is being set up for execution. The viewer can infer what is happening, Willa is more than aware her clock is running out, and the bounty hunter (Eric Schweig) whom Lockjaw has requested deliver her to his merciless gang of mercenaries understands he is leading a lamb to the slaughter. At the collision of these three entities, Anderson doesn't easily cut together a clean escape in which Willa and Schweig's Avanti combine forces to overcome the actual bad guys, no, he instead lets the camera rest on Willa's panicked face as she is initially left for dead by Avanti only to be given a window of time to escape because, unlike the mercenaries, his ethics haven't gone completely out the window due to his compensation. The audience experiences this scenario almost explicitly from Willa's vantage point - both physically and emotionally - meaning not only is there tension because of what is at stake but because we must sit in moments of unease in the unknown. Such authenticity is often difficult to capture in what is a highly constructed and planned medium like film yet there are countless examples of these seemingly unpredictable, unclean moments throughout the entirety of the film. From the sequence in which Sensei Sergio guides Bob through his "underground railroad situation" to Lockjaw's interrogation of Willa in an isolated convent, Anderson almost amplifies these moments in such a fashion so as to ensure this idea that there is some kind of divine plan that will ensure good always swings around in time to balance evil might only hold true if there are those who continue to show up out of love. One does not have to lead the revolution to enact change; presence is a kind of heroism all its own.

Ghetto Pat AKA Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an ex-revolutionary on a mission to rescue his daughter.
Photo by Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures - © Warner Bros. Pictures

This, maybe oversimplified, conclusion makes it sound as if One Battle After Another can be boiled down to a single thesis statement which isn't necessarily true given the breadth of ideas the screenplay renders, but in this imagining of what revolution might look like in a present society as applied to the action genre while centering on a story about a father trying to get back to his daughter it is, once more, these themes that resonate most. Elevating said storytelling is the specificity and idiosyncrasies of the details in the world and characters Anderson employs along with, of course, the previously noted style in which the film is captured. Aside from the portion of the conversation that could detail Anderson shooting on and having his film projected in VistaVision 35MM film, there is just something about kids skateboarding across rooftops, doing tricks while flares light up the sky behind them as World War III begins in the streets below all set to a Jonny Greenwood score that speaks to audiences on a deeper, more primal level. Like the story, the look is specific but timeless, it is energetic without being overwhelming - it too, is unclean. 

This thread translates to the performances as well, though my single complaint with the film is that a collaboration between Anderson and Regina Hall might have yielded more. Hall, known for her comedy chops, is almost completely mute here and though her performance as something of a surrogate mother to the lost and confused Willa is heartfelt one cannot help but hope this is only the beginning of a long relationship between filmmaker and actor. Otherwise, from DiCaprio's Lebowski-like aloofness (and wardrobe) that gives way to some of the funniest stuff the movie star has done to Infiniti's more grounded debut through to every single one of the smaller, supporting players - Wood Harris, Alana Haim, Shayna McHayle, Paul Grimstad, James Raterman, and countless others - each somehow find wayto stand out in remarkable fashion. Sensei Sergio's arrival in the movie signals a shift in energy altogether that allows the film to go from the aforementioned perspective of superiority and cynicism that sees Lockjaw and his ICE-like organization invent reasons to invade small towns like the fictional Baktan Cross (“Activate Eddie Van Halen!") to that of a more hopeful, optimistic perspective that shows people helping people out of nothing more than the humility that fascists would call humiliating. If it is Bob and Willa's relationship that dominates the emotional heft of the narrative it is the equally enthralling dynamic between Penn and del Toro's supporting performances of two men who have no idea the other exists that highlights the competing ideologies of how this reality not so far removed from our own can manage to feel both critical and cathartic.