Paul Thomas Anderson appears to be incapable of making a movie under two hours in length. “Boogie Nights” (1997) and “There Will Be Blood” (2007) were more than 2.5 hours long. “The Master” (2012), “Inherent Vice” (2014), and “Licorice Pizza” (2021) were almost 2.5 hours long. “Magnolia” (1998) was three hours long. Get the picture?
Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” (WB), which clocks in at well over 2.5 hours (in IMAX, no less), is his latest (loose) film adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel (after “Inherent Vice”). Set mostly in the present, with the opening section taking place 16 years earlier, “One Battle After Another” is timely, especially when it comes to the topics of immigration and Christian nationalism.
Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio), who goes by Pat earlier in the movie, is a member of a radical revolutionary group called the French 75. The members include Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), Deandra (Regina Hall), Howard (Paul Grimstad), and Junglepussy (Shayna McHayle). After a raid on a migrant detention center, Perfidia has an encounter with Col. Lockjaw (Sean Penn, who won an Oscar for portraying Harvey Milk), and will cross paths with him again later.
Perfidia also becomes involved with Pat. However, when she becomes pregnant, it’s unclear who the father is. Unsuited for motherhood, Perfidia splits, leaving Pat to be a single father to his baby daughter. When French 75 is being targeted by the government, Pat must go on the lam with a new identity for himself and the baby. They become Bob and Willa Ferguson and relocate to the fictional burgh of Baktan Cross in California.
Sixteen years later, Willa (Chase Infinit) is a self-assured teenager. She has a small social circle, and trains in martial arts with Sensei Sergio (Benicio Del Toro). Bob, on the other hand, has fallen apart, abusing various substances and becoming a shut-in. But all that is about to change when, under the direction of Lockjaw, Willa is being hunted.
Why, you ask? Because Lockjaw is desperate to join the powerful and poisonous white supremacists group Christmas Adventurers’ Club, led by uber-rich Throckmorton (Tony Goldwyn), and the possibility that he might be the father of biracial Willa would prevent that from happening.
As exhilarating as it is topical, some questions do arise. Why not edit two lengthy sequences – one in which Bob argues over his inability to recall a password and a chase scene on hilly mountain roads – shaving off a good 30 minutes from the runtime? Also, is Anderson anti-LGBTQ? Remember Henry Gibson’s campy gay barfly character in “Magnolia”? In “One Battle After Another,” it’s Willa’s trans friend and classmate that eventually gives up her mobile number, leading to her capture. Also, the scene in which Lockjaw performs a DNA test on Willa, includes the muscular man responding to a question about his tight t-shirt with vehement denials of being gay or “homosexual.”
Rating: B
