You don’t have to agree with a film’s political or social point of view to praise it.
Movies open us up to new ideas, challenging preconceived notions in the process. Great art has a way of doing just that.
“One Battle After Another” isn’t great art. It’s an impeccably crafted polemic with a soul that’s as rotten as today’s far-Left ghouls. The film, loosely based on Thomas Pynchon’s novel “Vineland,” casts an Antifa-style group as its heroes, demonizing law enforcement at every conceivable turn.
Its biggest flaw? Too many plot gimmicks that wouldn’t pass muster in an ’80s slasher film. It’s stunning that writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson didn’t see them at any point in the creative process.
Did ideology dull his artistic senses? If so, they didn’t ding his sense of cinematic excitement.
“One Battle After Another” MOVES. The film’s running time might seem bloated, but there’s never a lull in the story. What a shame that Anderson inserted so many forehead-smacking scenes en route.
The film opens along the U.S.-Mexico border. A violent group known as the French 75 overruns an immigrant detention center, holds guards at gunpoint and sets off explosions to distract anyone who might stop their assault.
And they’re ostensibly the good guys.
The villains are everywhere in the form of U.S. government officials, immigration officers and a leering ghoul named Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn).
Yes, that’s actually his name.
Col. Lockjaw may be Penn’s most indelible screen performance, and that’s saying plenty. More on him in a moment.
An activist named Perfidia (Teyana Taylor, en fuego) is the French 75’s emotional leader, and she drags her inept beau Bob (DiCaprio) into the fray. He’s not a quick study, but he adores Perfidia and will do as told.
One absurd plot gimmick later, and Perfidia gives birth to a bouncing baby girl, but this sudden family can’t shake the long arm of the law.
Flash forward 16 or so years, and Bob is a single father to young Willa (Chase Infiniti). Perfidia is out of the picture, and Bob spends his days doting on their daughter and smoking copious amounts of weed. When Col. Lockjaw re-enters the picture, with Willa in his sights, Bob must become the father he never expected he could be.
That plot summary omits the heavy sermonizing built into this “Battle.” French 75 targets ICE-like centers and agents, and their methods never come under scrutiny.
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MILD SPOILER
There’s no “come to Jesus” moment to be found with the revolutionary characters. They blow up buildings, shoot innocents and praise violence at every turn.
They’re the heroes of the film. And, to this critic, it’s sickening, especially given recent headlines.
END OF SPOILER
The government officials depicted here, from Col. Lockjaw to lesser figures, are either racist, murderous, liars or all three.
Often all three.
A farcical subplot finds Col. Lockjaw vying to join a White Supremacy group. It’s like a Joy Reid fever dream, but less coherent. Penn’s character is monotonously one-dimensional. The best movie villains offer a few shades of gray, moments where their humanity peeks through the rage.
Nothing doing here.
What is Anderson trying to say? Better yet, why is he trying to say it?
DiCaprio delivers another impeccable performance. Bob is unlike any character we’ve seen before. He’s hot-headed and mild-mannered, an accidental hippie who delivers the film’s best comic beats.
He’s trying so hard to reconnect with his radical days of yore, but his pot-addled brain won’t cooperate. Anderson overplays the running gag, but for a while it’s blissful comic relief.
“One Battle After Another” may be visceral in every sense of the word, but it can be shockingly dumb. Plot coincidences pile up in the third act, which otherwise offers some enthralling car chases.
How a master craftsman like Anderson could succumb to such silliness is a mystery. Then again, he may have been tripped up by his own messaging. It wouldn’t be the first time.
That’s a shame, because there’s a brilliant movie lurking within “One Battle After Another,” which also squanders Benicio del Toro by giving him a silly, anti-hero role. You can see it peering out of the shadows, combining the story’s bravura filmmaking with the kind of nuance that marks great filmmaking.
Anderson is too busy scrawling a furious message on screen to find it.
HiT or Miss: “One Battle After Another” is equal parts mesmerizing and moronic, an exhilarating experience that will make viewers scratch their heads in more ways than one.
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