By Bob Garver
Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson is known as a top-tier talent without top-tier recognition. None of his movies have made more than $50 million at the domestic box office, and despite 11 nominations, he’s never won himself an Academy Award (a combined three Oscar wins have come from his films, including Daniel Day-Lewis as Best Actor for 2007’s “There Will Be Blood,” but I’m talking about Anderson personally). “One Battle After Another” seems to represent an attempt by Anderson to step up his game, both commercially and creatively. The result is a film that is highly likely to give him his first blockbuster, and yes, could very well end his losing streak at the Oscars.
The film initially follows Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), members of a revolutionary group known as the French 75. The group frees detainees, robs banks, blows up (hopefully) abandoned buildings, and generally causes headaches for authority figures like Lt. Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn). Pat and Perfidia fall in love due to their shared thrills in their missions, but Perfidia also has an affair with Lockjaw due to their shared thrills in their cat-and-mouse game. Perfidia eventually gives birth to a daughter named Charlene, and Pat wants the three of them to settle down and have a normal life, but his wanting to give up the risk drives Perfidia away. She ultimately botches things so badly that the group is brought down by Lockjaw, Pat and Charlene have to go into hiding, and she’s basically dead to everyone who may have once cared about her.
Sixteen years later, the now-Col. Lockjaw is up for membership in a powerful white-supremacist organization. The problem is that they won’t let him join if they join if they find out about his mixed-race possible daughter Charlene. Lockjaw sets to tracking down the girl now known as “Willa Ferguson” (Chase Infinati), who is living in a sanctuary city with her father-figure “Bob.” Bob is expectedly loving and protective of Willa, but he’s a mess himself, which causes the girl to practically have to be a parent to him. She’s smart and steadfast like her mother, but she has no idea the trouble she’s about to be in with Lockjaw and associates both legitimate and unscrupulous descending on the area.
So much of the film is chase and action sequences, with the French 75’s activities in the first half of the film giving way to both Lockjaw pursuing Willa and an intoxicated Bob trying to recover Willa with the help of her karate instructor (Benicio Del Toro) in the second. Anderson has been known more for “tension” than “action” in his career, but this movie – especially with its bumpy-ride car chases – will make you think he’s been an action director this whole time. But the appeal doesn’t lie entirely in action, there are also some great emotional performances and gut-busting dry humor, as well as more outrageous humor. Bob’s frustration over being expected to remember decades-old French 75 code is arguably the highlight of the entire movie.
At this point, the question isn’t whether or not “One Battle After Another” will be nominated for Academy Awards, it’s the number of categories in which it will be nominated. DiCaprio, Penn, and surefire breakouts Taylor and Infiniti could all get into the acting categories, and Anderson himself wears so many hats in the production that he could be up for at least four awards. I do have a few quibbles, like how the film does so little with a fellow revolutionary played by Regina Hall, and Bob’s questionable usefulness to the story, and how a character seemingly only survives a consequential action sequence just so they can be used for a humorous scene later. But overall this is a very exciting, funny, enjoyable movie that I wouldn’t mind earning Paul Thomas Anderson the recognition he’s deserved for decades.
Grade: B
“One Battle After Another” is playing at Flagship Cinemas in Palmyra. The film is rated R for pervasive language, violence, sexual content and drug use. Its running time is 161 minutes.
Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu.
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