Most movies take place in either the real world or a fantasy world. Some filmmakers like to blur the two, like how Tarantino's movies play out in his own version of reality, or how the Conjuring series and its spinoffs imagine a version of our world where Ed and Lorraine Warren weren't con artists but actually battled paranormal forces of evil for real. Loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel 'Vineland', Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another takes place in a version of America that overlays the 1970s on top of our current times. In Anderson's world, the organised left-wing revolutionaries of the Nixon era still operate, freeing migrants from detainment camps, pulling off bank robberies in the manner of the Symbionese Liberation Army, and blowing up federal buildings like the far right militia of '80s America.
Well, at least they exist at the start of the movie. Involved in an SLA type outfit known as "French 75" is Pat (Leonardo DiCaprio), a bombmaker in a passionate relationship with fellow terrorist/freedom fighter (cross out as you see fit) Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), a loose cannon who seems to be involved for sexual thrills more than any genuine revolutionary zeal. When Perfidia gives birth to their daughter Willa, Pat develops a distaste for revolution, preferring to look after his newborn. Perfidia's loose cannon ways end up causing the ruin of French 75 when she kills a bank security guard in cold blood, leading to a crackdown on the group, with most either executed or imprisoned as they're tracked down by Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn), a self-styled Colonel Decker to this not so A-Team.
15 years later Pat, now going under the alias "Bob", is living in a border town with Willa (the wonderfully named Chase Infiniti), enjoying a blissfully stoned existence and embracing fatherhood. Bob's past catches up with him when Lockjaw re-emerges, taking a personal interest in hunting down Willa, who is taken away by Bob's old comrades without his knowledge. Trouble is, years of alcohol and drug abuse have fried Bob's brain, and he's now totally unprepared for a return to war.
Some have read a little too much into One Battle After Another's barely existent politics, even branding it propaganda for left-wing terrorism. Attaching any sort of political import to this romp is a folly. As a study of left wing revolutionaries it has more in common with Woody Allen's Bananas than Claude Chabrol's Nada or Paul Schrader's Patty Hearst. The movie couldn't be any more of a cartoon if Penn's Lockjaw found himself foiled by a fake tunnel painted on a cliff face. Anderson even pulls a gag right out of Roadrunner's bag of tricks in his movie's climactic set-piece. Bob may be seen watching The Battle of Algiers on TV, but PTA has far less heady frames of reference in mind, drawing heavily from '70s blaxploitation and '80s action movies. Taylor's gun-toting, sexed-up Perfidia could be the heroine of a Jack Hill drive-in staple if she weren't such a monster. Bob's out of depth white guy who mistakenly believes himself to be the main character in someone else's drama is straight out of Big Trouble in Little China. One supporting character's arc is a mash-up of Firestarter's John Rainbird and Darth Vader. Penn plays Lockjaw like Henry Gibson's neo-Nazi from The Blues Brothers and Robin Williams' Popeye had some horrific fusion accident like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly.
Unlike Tarantino and his wannabe clones, Anderson doesn't make his references explicit, which makes them all the more fun to speculate on. While One Battle After Another draws from multiple sources it's uniquely a product of the PTA production line. It features some of the best filmmaking of his career, striking a perfect balance between the distracting showiness of his early movies and the more mature style he's favoured in recent works. Hal Ashby continues to prove a core influence, with Anderson and his editor Andy Jurgensen constructing immaculately stitched sequences that would make that old master of the cutting block envious. The centrepiece is an incredible sequence that sees Bob seeks refuge with local fixer Sergio (Benicio del Toro) as he tries to escape town with Lockjaw's forces overtaking the streets. There's a running gag throughout the set-piece that sees Bob argue with a French 75 contact over the phone regarding the secret password he forgot at some point in the last 15 years (anyone who has ever had to deal with customer service call centres will feel his pain), the sort of routine you imagine Allen might include if he remade Bananas today. The climax is a uniquely staged car chase that will immediately make you understand why Anderson opted to resurrect the vintage VistaVision format; comparing an action scene to a rollercoaster has never been so apt, with Anderson making the best use of steep hills since Bullitt.
One Battle After Another is a rare modern major American movie with an exclusively American cast, veterans like DiCaprio, Del Toro and Penn mixing it up with thrilling newcomers like Taylor and Infiniti. Bob is a role tailor-made for DiCaprio, an actor who can portray frazzled paranoia like no other. Infiniti is tasked with playing the one normal person in the movie, the human guest star in this Muppet show, and her heartfelt performance ensures there's a human centre to this over the top madness. As the chilled out Sergio, Del Toro is the yin to DiCaprio's yang, the Crosby to his Hope. Such is Taylor's impact that her presence haunts the film long after her character has exited the stage.
Some of the plot beats are a little convenient and contrived, and the movie requires you not to ask inconvenient questions about the incongruous lack of modern surveillance tech available to US authorities here. The film's geographical setting is as compressed as a GTA map, with a left wing cell improbably stationed just a short drive from a white nationalist compound. You have to accept that Anderson's film is set in its own world - Andersonville, south of Pynchonia - where such rules don't apply. But once you tune into its frequency you'll be fully locked in as One Battle After Another takes you through one thrilling sequence after another.
Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti
