‘One Battle After Another’ Review: PTA’s Incendiary Thriller

As great of a director as Paul Thomas Anderson is, he may be an even better salesman. Somehow, he talked Warner Bros. into giving him what’s been reported in the press as anywhere between $130 million and $175 million to spend on a political thriller loaded with allusions to contemporary America’s hottest of hot-button issues. And he did it despite the fact he has never directed a movie that grossed more than $78 million worldwide, often working with material that was far less potentially polarizing than this.

What did he say to convince them? I would love to know. Surely the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, one of our biggest and most bankable movie stars, helped seal the deal. Still, One Battle After Another casts DiCaprio as a depressed, alcoholic, stoned, washed-up former revolutionary who spends most of the film in a ratty bathrobe and a messy ponytail and generally looking about as unhandsome as one of the most handsome men on the planet is capable of looking. This ain’t exactly King of the World Leo. And One Battle After Another sure as hell ain’t Titanic.

Truth be told, if it was my $175 million on the line, I’m not sure I would choose to spend it on this material. But as a viewer rather than an investor, all I feel about Warners’ decision to fund One Battle After Another is gratitude. They gave Anderson the money and the canvas to make his funniest and saddest movies in many years, one that certainly contains plenty of political commentary but works best as a moving character-driven thriller about the connection between a washed-up father and his teenage daughter, who he’s raised as a solo parent for 16 years.

READ MORE: Paul Thomas Anderson Reveals His Favorite of His Movies

A lot of the film’s storyline is only vaguely alluded to by its trailers and, from what I gather, deviates from Anderson’s loose inspiration, Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland. It’s also got some delightfully unpredictable subplots. For those reasons, my plot synopsis here will be brief and a little vague. DiCaprio’s character, Bob Ferguson, lives a reclusive life with his 16-year-old-daughter Willa (a terrific Chase Infiniti). If Bob holds a job now, we never really see him at it. But before Willa was born, Bob and her mother Perfidia (Teyana Taylor) were revolutionaries who carried out elaborate attacks against the U.S. government and other American institutions.

In the first assault of their “war,” they ran afoul of Captain Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), who oversees a migrant detention center. During their group’s raid, Perfidia emasculated Lockjaw — and also mesmerized him with her undeniable beauty and sexuality — and he never quite got over it. 16 years later, Perfidia’s out of the picture and Bob’s raising Willa on his own when Lockjaw finally receives a tip about their whereabouts.

Viewers may want to draw parallels between One Battle After Another and Inherent Vice, Anderson’s last adaptation of a voluminous Thomas Pynchon novel. The results reminded me more of The Big Lebowski, where another bumbling, bath-robed stoner tried to find his way through a complex high-stakes plot. But there are also strains of ultra-bleak political humor akin to something like Dr. Strangelove as well. Cross the raw materials within those two films with some Pynchon and Anderson’s own singular gifts for striking imagery and visual juxtapositions and you wind up with One Battle After Another. The results may not be Anderson’s most incisive work, but it is surely his most exciting on a visceral level, with much of One Battle After Another’s second act devoted to Lockjaw’s methodical pursuit of Bob and Willa, and their efforts to stay ahead of him.

That section is bracketed by some of Anderson’s loveliest, strangest, and funniest scenes ever. Bob’s central dilemma is not going to be relatable to a lot of people — most folks I know have never been chased by an unhinged member of the American armed forces — but his underlying psychological issues will. Plenty of us worry about the state of the world, and how we will protect our children in a society that seems increasingly on tilt. We look at our own lives and wonder how we arrived at a place we never envisioned. Also, a lot of us just want to, like, chill on the couch and watch The Battle of Algiers. Life so rarely allows us to do that. There’s always one thing after another occupying our attention.

You might have noticed that all the photos in this article are pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio. While he is outstanding in this film as a frazzled ex-hippie, ex-bomb-maker, and current scolding nag of a father, that’s only because Warner Bros.’ press site only has four publicity photos available for critics’ use, and all of them are of Leo. The rest of the cast is equally stellar. The best performance might actually come from Penn, who is absolutely terrifying and extremely compelling (not to mentioned extremely shredded) as the menacing, bigoted, single-minded Lockjaw. His scenes with Taylor are especially weird in the best possible way.

Given its potentially controversial backdrop, it might surprise audiences to discover just how consistently funny One Battle After Another is. It’s got some huge laughs, a lot of them at DiCaprio’s expense as he fumbles his way through a series of crises of his own making. For all of PTA’s gorgeous IMAX photography, kinetic chase scenes, and hot-take ready subplots, One Battle After Another is, at its core, a movie about a very ineffectual but very loving dad having a really bad day. It might be Anderson’s best comedy since Boogie Nights.

Of course, no one would categorize Boogie Nights strictly as a comedy, and I wouldn’t necessarily call One Battle After Another one either. It’s so many different kinds of movies crammed together; a paranoid thriller, a stoner adventure, an issues movie of the sort that used to be the Hollywood studios’ bread and butter but rarely get made today in the world of IP and risk-averse corporations. That’s one more reason to see it, and another reason to marvel at the fact that it exists at all.

RATING: 9/10