(Louis Volker / Fourth Estate)

Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest is a surprise hit among audiences and critics alike

BY LOUIS VOLKER, STAFF WRITER

A high school dance. A bounty hunter. A convent of nuns that grow marijuana. A pregnant woman with a gun. Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film “One Battle After Another” truly has everything and it did not disappoint. 

Inspired by the 1990 Thomas Pynchon novel “Vineland,” the new comedy/drama immediately makes one thing clear when it opens on an immigrant detention center: This is a movie about America today. It’s got something to say, highlighting a generational struggle against authoritarianism and institutionalized racism. 

“One Battle After Another” tells a story about Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) racing against each other to recover Bob’s daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti) after she is kidnapped. Bob, an ex-revolutionary, and Lockjaw, a white supremacist military general, are at odds with each other and share a history with Perfida Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) — Willa’s mother who has disappeared. 

While every performance from the ensemble cast shines, Penn’s stands out. He portrays Col. Lockjaw with a goofy intensity and absurd physicality that strikes a perfect balance, oscillating between being an intimidating threat and a weird idiot. His goofy walk and pursed lips shouldn’t work; yet, they do. This goofiness is particularly effective at highlighting the inherent incoherence of white supremacist ideology. 

Chase Infiniti (“Presumed Innocent”) also stands out in her feature film debut among a cast of longtime stars. Her performance as a teenage girl avoids falling into a caricature of pure innocence or rebellion and brings a very human thread to the movie. Her and DiCaprio’s strong chemistry does the important job of setting up the stakes of the movie — and it pays off well. 

During the two hour and 40 minute runtime, “One Battle After Another” does a great job of using only necessary scenes to avoid dragging. This works well with Anderson’s no-nonsense directing style. 

The humor is also extremely amusing, but never takes away from the integrity of the story. Its funniest slapstick moments are also deliberate plot beats that drive the movie forward. 

One question to raise about the film is whether or not Anderson, as a white man, was the right director for this movie. “One Battle After Another” highlights the importance of intersectionality and community in resisting oppression; yet, Anderson’s lens on resistance can’t help but be largely white-centric. 

This shows, as the plot happens through DiCaprio’s character’s perspective for about half the runtime and his face dominates every poster and trailer for the movie. 

While much of the movie’s humor comes from laughing at Bob’s struggles with the digital era and reliance on the community around him, there are still traces of the “white knight”, a trope of oftentimes placing white protagonists into heroic roles that rescue BIPOC supporting characters,  that could be understood as harmful rhetoric.

The white experience isn’t necessarily something audiences are dying to hear for the thousandth time from within the context of social revolution. 

The movie does contain commentaries on immigration, racism, authoritarianism and censorship; however, they are not the main focus. The ‘drama’ element of the comedy/drama is instead focused on Bob and Willa’s quest to reunite and the sacrifices that others are willing to make in order to help them. It’s a deeply human meditation on the value of connection, family and community in the midst of advocating for revolution, as well as the absurd people that you meet along the way. 

Genuinely funny and full of heart, Anderson’s direction creates layered characters out of an all-star cast that the audience genuinely cares about. Regardless of concerns about Anderson’s place as a white director, “One Battle After Another” was a great film. 

With instantly iconic chase sequences, pitch-perfect performances and an excellent musical score to match, the movie earns 4.7 out of 5 stars.  I’m excited to see how it does this upcoming awards season and I’m looking forward to watching it again.