Paul Thomas Anderson’s dark comedy One Battle After Another turns overreaching into an art form. Scene by scene, this “loose adaptation” (per the end credits) of Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland strains to be a two-hour-and-41-minute statement about the times we live in. Yet despite its whirling-dervish referencing of immigrant scapegoating, political polarization, and white supremacist machismo, the film never expands from its carnivalesque surface to truly delve into the tangled sociopolitical murk of our moment.
Pynchon’s novel explored the ’60s hangover via an ’80s-set story about aging California hippies-cum-revolutionaries. (And given that Pynchon’s prose tends toward arcane absurdity, “story” should be taken with a grain of salt.) Anderson places his own sprawling narrative within something akin to an eternal present. The migrant detention center in the opening sequence could be any old pop-up ICE facility in your current sanctuary city of choice. No year is given, though the sense of it being now (or “now,” in a sort of Escape from New York way) is very prevalent. Yet if “what has happened before happens again and again and again” is the thematic aim, Anderson proves unable or unwilling to make the barbed wire trenchantly rend flesh.
Antifascist agitator Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) is a member of the French 75, an insurgent group doing eternal battle against various American tyrannies. She’s romantically involved with one of the group’s members, Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a bundle of nerves who seems like he’d always prefer to be anywhere but here. While liberating the migrant camp, Perfidia crosses paths with the ludicrously virile military man Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), who will prove to be a thorn in her and Bob’s sides for a long period thereafter.
The first act sets up a thorny triangle: While the French 75 blow up buildings, rob banks, and generally upset the capitalist status quo, Perfidia and Bob grow closer—as do she and Lockjaw after he corners her in a bathroom stall during one of the group’s missions. A sadomasochistic relationship develops. A baby of uncertain parentage is born. And then Perfidia betrays the French 75, resulting in several deaths and the survivors going underground. Finally, to the oh-so-cleverly employed strains of Steely Dan’s “Dirty Work,” 16 years pass.
It’s at this point that Anderson reveals One Battle After Another as one of his fraught family dramas in the vein of Boogie Nights and Magnolia, with Bob acting the slipshod guardian to teenage Willa (Chase Infiniti). She barely tolerates her dad’s paranoid overprotectiveness (phones, for example, are an absolute no-no), at one point rolling her eyes at how out of step he is with modern concepts like gender-neutral they/them pronouns. This sets up a quickly glossed-over twist when Willa’s nonbinary friend turns Judas—minority and marginalized people being quick to betray in the world of this film—giving her and Bob up to a colleague of Lockjaw, who’s still obsessed with finding them both.
There’s much more to come in this overstuffed satirical knickknack, from copious car chases—all well-staged, if not especially pulse-pounding—to a racial-purity-obsessed secret society that Lockjaw desperately longs to join to Benicio del Toro as Sensei Sergio, a SoCal martial artist presiding over a Harriet Tubman-like underground railroad. The lone unimpeachable contribution is Jonny Greenwood’s score, which is lacquered over almost every scene and works overtime to make all the frenetic on-screen action feel more exciting than it actually is.
Taylor is a compelling presence in the first act, the camera constantly placing her in towering contrast to the oft-cowering DiCaprio. And yet, despite Perfidia’s importance to the film’s overall emotional arc, she’s finally treated like an afterthought. It’s something you couldn’t conceive the Anderson of the ’90s doing to any of the female collaborators, such as Julianne Moore or Melora Walters, who frequently proved to be the exalted hearts and souls of his early movies.
Willa is meant to assume a similarly transcendent role here: the lost child, bearing the burdens of various parents (genetic and spiritual), who finds herself becoming a beacon of sorts for a better future. It’s a nice sentiment, one that might resonate more were Anderson less enamored of the manly non-virtues of Bob and Lockjaw, both shallow cartoon characters given center stage, each feeding into the worst tendencies of the performers playing them.
DiCaprio has long leaned into the off-putting and ugly aspects of the roles he takes on. In Martin Scorsese’s recent Killers of the Flower Moon, those actorly instincts helped illuminate the chillingly clueless sociopathy of a man who effectively turned a blind eye to state-sanctioned genocide, even when it affected the woman closest to him. But DiCaprio has nothing so complex to play in One Battle After Another: Bob is a figure of fun from frame one, a bathrobe-bedecked stumblebum who doesn’t seem a person so much as an acting-class abstraction. (Several lengthy scenes in which he’s unable to recall some long-forgotten code words from the revolutionaries’ playbook devolve into unfunny shouts, manic grunts, and wild gestures.)
And Penn is even worse: broad, one-note, self-satisfied, his gruff smoker’s voice and spit-slicked-combover coming off like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cosplay. Nearly three hours of that is…a lot. And when Lockjaw effectively becomes a resurrected Romero zombie toward film’s end—all so Anderson can score some narratively nonsensical points against institutional hubris and leopard-eating-its-own-face psychosis—it just further points up One Battle After Another’s failure to accurately, let alone adequately, capture our tempestuous zeitgeist.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.
lol the one bad review of the movie. maybe you just have bad taste?
That isn’t how art works bro
So how does it work,bro
It’s always the majority who has a notoriously bad taste.
Agree !
Bob & Willa are the only meaningful roles. The rest is farce
Reading lots of hyperbolic praise for this film, but your review rings true (especially when considered against the trailers), and makes this movie sound a lot like Inherent Vice, which is what I was afraid of.
At least the incels and racists over at World of Reel will have someone to rally behind.
Sounds like you haven’t even seen the movie – I have and all this review was way off base. Chalk it up to “Didn’t get it”?
you agree with this review because of the trailer? Are you stupid or something, ese?
lol this writer clearly has an agenda, and he’s not bright enough to realize how transparent he is. Or maybe he does and his hubris force him to be the moronic contrarian standing alone an island that is slowly sinking into the ocean.
Hope you can swim Keith.
“Lol”
If you’re a fan of the movie and disagree with the review just say so, and please- say why.
In this case I’m riding with a lot of the criticisms expressed by the ‘moronic contrarian’- the movie for me is a (long) hot mess. It’s a shiny cartoon.
good review. you raise points that have always plagued the work pta. his problems to create complex strong characters has always irked me. people don’t really talk about the characters of his previous movies. they often just talk about the performance of daniel day lewis, not about the action by the created character. people will probably like the performances of leo and penn again and just ignore the weak characters again.
“people don’t really talk about the characters of his previous movies. they often just talk about the performance of daniel day lewis, not about the action by the created character.” you are just making up stuff now
The comment seems clear: great acting cannot compensate for badly-written characters.
It reads like you’ve been bribed by the extreme right or are pandering to their agenda — or maybe you’re just the world’s best ass-kisser. Either way, stop writing reviews.
Thank you for being the one critic to call this bluff. Absolute flop. Ostentatious crap. Hated the Perfidia character, all F***-F***-F*** really pathetic but I guess this kind of f-word-porn-with-machine-gun is what gets people excited these days, poor souls. And the Hallmark letter this supposed bad-ass psycho leaves her daughter at the end (“family… boo hoo sniff sniff”), jeez. To think this director made the amazing There Will Be Blood and Licorice Pizza. To sum it up, for some mysterious reason PTA seems to have tried to do a Tarantino. Get back to doing your own amazing stuff and let Tarantino do his.
YES!!! Thank you. You, and the critic here, summed it up perfectly. What a waste of 2h 41 minutes. Yikes.
Let’s see what word of mouth does for this film. I just saw it, and found it a catalyst for a lot of discussion about a lot of current issues, and as a reminder for some past times in this country. I thought the way the characters were depicted was completely intentional because that was the point..I, for one, liked it a lot and hope it does well..
Spot on review. I found the film arduous to get through. The antagonist was a hyperbolic personification of objectively ruthless policy; very fun watching him navigate an hour long melancholy one-shot with spasmodic jazz piano smh. To save the day, we’re given a shot man-child who ultimately achieves nothing but perpetuating the idea of committing futile effort as an expression of spiritual salvation for the next generation. ***que played out 80’s song very loudly for “impact”***
I couldn’t agree more with your review, Keith – you’ve absolutely nailed it. You appear to be the only reviewer NOT to give it 10/10. Good for you!
Intuitively, your score feels low, but also, having just seen it, I do agree with a lot of your points. the film shifts pretty heavily into the Sean Penn and Leo characters, and their one-dimensionality helps with the comedy (I think I found the film a lot funnier than you did) but deflates some of the thematic stuff maybe.
revisiting this review to say keith is 100% correct. i’m a pta- and pynchon-loving, bleeding-heart leftist and i thought this movie was a shambles, saved only by a couple of performances (certainly not dicaprio’s) and the cinematography. really disappointed by it, and by the tribalism i’ve seen from fans.
Keith hates fun.
I honestly and respectfully, couldn’t disagree more with this review. It wasn’t an issue based movie though many, including myself had this expectation. Having said that, I wasn’t disappointed to find that is a character-based film, set in a world Americans already have a foot in. I thought Penns character was the on screen embodiment of the pathology of maga. It’s been a question for 11 years now and when it all boils down to it, it’s insecurity and a desperate need for validation, whether it be through the President, The Proud Boys or the Heritage Foundation or in Penn’s case, a fascist, with a leadship role as a brutal anti-immigration colonel and a desperate desire to be accepted by the deep state, white supremecy group The Christmas Adventurers. I’m thankful we were able to giggle a bit with Leo’s character. He was fish out of water, catapulted into a chaotic world which he had avoided in seclusion for 16 years. The cinemotography you didn’t even mention. I mean, the long shot of the rolling desert road with the continuing peaks and valleys, total metaphor for one battle after another. Yea, I could go on and on but this film was fucking great!
Agree. This is the best movie of the year. Will probably win Best Picture, Director and Screenplay and Penn and DiCaprio are shoe ins for noms.
For sure this movie will win everything butit does not deserve to be even nominated.
Solid review. Appreciate the insight.
This is one of the five or so best movies of this century. This review is wack.
Nailed it. Except that two stars is being charitable. And yes, 100% on the score.
Okay “movie critic”, feels like you already had your mind set before you even sat in the cinema. I’m not going to go over your rant here because there’s too much to discuss, but you should restrain yourself from writing any future reviews on any movie whatsoever because you clearly cannot write from a perspective of an unbiased movie critic.
Agreed. I get the obvious satirical jabs at both sides, at both extremes, both comical and bumbling. But none of it worked for me. I didn’t care one bit for a single character. As opposed to, say, Boogie Nights, where I fell in love with everyone, flaws and all, infinitely better in story and arc versus One Battle After Another.
A ham fisted slog, and my least favorite PTA film.
I truly do not understand why this film is being praised so universally. Feel like I’m stuck in a Black Mirror episode — that somehow when I sat through that lonnnngggg 180 minutes, I watched an entirely different film. PTA masterfully creates worlds with such strong tone and style and this overhyped nonsense lacked both. At best it looked like a really well-done car commercial. Over the top performances, way too much winking at the camera from Leo, Penn, and Anderson himself. The first 20 minutes didn’t have a moment without score, which was unbearably distracting, and it had the humor of a lesser Coen Bros film circa 2004 (Christmas Adventure Club…how quirky!). It was like three incomplete films from 3 different genres mashed into one epic bowl of unsalted leftover soup. Benicio Del Toro gave a flawless performance and it was the only redeemable thread in said unsalted leftover soup.
Bye!
Unsalted leftover soup lol. Woulda been a better title that’s for sure.
It takes courage to stick your neck out like this, but the criticisms here are substantial. At some level, I think PTA is not really equipped to take on political themes – not many filmmakers are. A story he is equipped to write is one about father figures – he admits himself somewhere that this is the story he often finds himself writing – and the film does feel most comfortable when it it devolves to a family drama. As a consequence of these inadequacies, the film feels clunky and dis-integrated.
In some ways, what this film attemped was already done much more successfully by Cuaron’s Children of Men, albeit for a different political moment.
Grazie di esistere… iniziavo a temere di essere impazzito come si un’isola deserta ormai convinto di essere l’unico al mondo a non capire la genialità del film. Gli sperticati giudizi positivi mi sembrano frutto di ipnosi collettiva.
The film packed in every stereotype, and rather than satirizing any of them, it reinforced all of them. It had the hyper-sexual black woman, the hapless and overwrought opponent of fascism, the bottled-up and vicious military man, etc. etc. Right now, we don’t need these paint-by-numbers cardboard cutouts. We need Casavetes. We need Bergman. We need Nichols. Hollywood will never give them to us now.
Finally, a thoughtful review of this infantile, pathetic nonsense. No internal logic, a pretentious score that’s suppose to make it slapstick but it’s just annoying. And the ludicrous, melodramatic ending….sigh.
If you want movies that stick it to the man, check out ‘Matewan’ and ‘Wind that Shakes the Barley’
Not this, hipster, overblown piece of nothing. Peace.