One Battle After Another is the latest magnum opus from writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson (aka PTA) at 163 minutes is the latest epic to add to his back catalogue of similarly lengthy epics. Based on author Thomas Pyncon’s book, Vineland, it sees a group of urban guerrillas named the French 75 possibly the year when both the group and that population last had a shower. Led by Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) surely a porn moniker but here a head strong opinionated black woman who leads her fellow wannabe revolutionaries in an operation that frees Mexican immigrants awaiting processing at a military base. In due course she humiliates Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn) and surely another porn moniker who is sexually humiliated by Pefidia which instils in him a sexual obsession with her despite his overt racism.
But Perfidia already has a partner in Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) who have a child Willa who we catch up with 16 years later and is now played by Chase Infiniti (not a porn moniker but a real name) as a teenager. Bob is still loosely involved with French 75 but is single handedly raising Willa. But Lockjaw has been orchestrating a series of covert operations hunting down the group and it’s Perfidia’s former revolutionary colleague Deandra (Regina Hall) who extricates Willa from a High School dance just as it gets busted by the Colonel’s military forces.
Right from the very start it’s a story that drags you into the heart of the action and what follows sees Bob trying to find Willa who has been taken to the guerrilla groups safe place which Bob now cannot find having forgotten the passwords needed to locate the venue. To that end he reteams with a martial arts sensei called Sergei (Benecio Del Toro) to both help him find her and at the same time keep him out of the reaches of Lockjaw’s forces.
There’s a whole load to enjoy here. The performances are great notably Teyana Taylor but especially Sean Penn as the seething, confused Colonel desperate to be accepted into a covert group of powerful racist business men. As with his very best films Anderson throws together a disparate group of characters to stunning effect with a whole load of involving scenes that makes the time fly. He even gets a chance to put in an unusual car chase that’s shot and framed in such a way to make it woozily hypnotic and like nothing you’ve seen before. All of this is scored by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and idiosyncratic and here sparse and discordant music that continues his and PTA’s long and highly successful collaboration that reaches back to 2007’s terrific, ‘There Will be Blood’.
One Battle After Another is typically PTA and terrific on so many fronts that this is likely to figure highly when the awards season begins in earnest. Don’t be put off by the films epic length. It’s no battle with a film this good.
related feature : ‘One Battle After Another’ – on the red carpet with Leonardo DiCaprio, Benecio Del Toro and more
related feature : Kissing DiCaprio – Why it’s ‘not all it’s cracked up to be’ says Kate Winslet
Here’s the One Battle After Another trailer…..
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