Leave it to Paul Thomas Anderson to make the most weirdly suspenseful movie of the year. One Battle After Another is what happens when a master filmmaker fires on all cylinders, a unique, gripping, and darkly funny thriller that has to be seen to be understood.
As Anderson slides us into his world of modern-day revolutionaries, introducing us to the mesmerizing and atmospheric score that will pulse steadily throughout, the man behind Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and one of my favorite films of all time, There Will Be Blood, he shifts direction: Captain Lockjaw (Sean Penn) is utterly aroused by Perfida Beverly Hills, the Black radical who has just taken over his compound. Anyone who says they were expecting to see a boner in the opening moments of this near-three-hour, intentionally meandering and utterly and confoundingly terrific film is lying their f**king ass off.
Anderson lets his story zig and zag and stumble forward with intense intentionality, keeping his audience off kilter. One Battle After Another repeatedly lulls you into thinking you know where it’s headed, and then Anderson veers off and goes a different direction. In lesser hands such an approach would come off as undisciplined and chaotic, but PTA, ever so talented, feeds off the chaos, channeling it unapologetically.
The pure embodiment of this is on display in the form of Bob Ferguson, played with precision by Leonardo DiCaprio. A washed up ex-revolutionary who is high, drunk, or some combination of the two, PTA’s primary protagonist stumbles his way from one situation to the next–or one battler after another, if you will–as larger forces operate around him. Leo is so good in this role, his character so pathetic, that it’s likely some will overlook just how much he dominates here. Whether he’s channeling his raw and underappreciated physical comedy talents or going ballistic on a passcode-enforcing phone operator, he’s once again at the top of his game. Another role, another masterclass.
Penn, too, is operating at another level, his sadistically deranged Lockjaw an incredibly entertaining, scene-chewing creature of pure intensity. As nasty as Lockjaw is, Anderson keeps you guessing as to his characters’ true intentions (Lockjaw himself may not know)–the character is a walking hypocrite, a man so consumed by his contradictions that he doesn’t even know which way is up. If anything, Anderson could have done more with his character, Lockjaw never escaping the caricature you assume he’ll become.
Acting aside (Benicio del Toro and Chase Infiniti are both excellent as well), One Battle After Another is a steady drip–nay, a fire hose–of suspense, but it comes in the strangest of forms. The movie is highly political, cynical, unpredictable, and funny, a weird mash of ideas working in an unholy concert. But it is consistently and undeniably thrilling. Sweat-inducingly so. The score, which throbs relentlessly when it isn’t attempting to recalibrate your heartrate, is used so superbly that there rarely isn’t a moment where Anderson extracts a sense of dread, a feeling that something could go very bad the next second.
And then there’s the climax, an incredibly alluring and powerfully shot car chase that relies less on quick cuts and the feeling of speed than the risk that over the next hill top the world is going to end. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
I’ve never seen anything quite like One Battle After Another, either. For that, it should be commended from the hills.
Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.