Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, “One Battle After Another,” is as explosive as its title suggests. Leonardo DiCaprio anchors the story as Bob, a burned-out revolutionary raising the daughter his radical girlfriend (Teyana Taylor) left behind. In their early days, Bob and his comrades weren’t idealists in coffee shops—they were domestic terrorists. Bombed detention centers. Firebombed senators’ offices. Bloody bank heists. Their legacy is destruction, and now Bob’s greatest struggle is shielding his daughter from both the past and the system he once fought.
The timing of “One Battle” couldn’t be worse. At a moment when real-life political violence is at a fever pitch, Anderson delivers a film that sympathizes with characters who maim and even kill in the name of “the cause.” While, in the real world, national leaders have been calling for unity, dialing down rhetoric, rejecting hate. Yet, here at the cinema, arrives a two-and-a-half-hour hand grenade lobbed straight into the conversation. Whatever its artistic merits, “One Battle After Another” risks normalizing the very extremism the country is desperate to escape.
That said, the characters do suffer the consequences of their actions to a certain degree. And Anderson still knows how to stage a spectacle. The cast is stacked: Sean Penn as a sinister, self-righteous government operative, Benicio Del Toro in a slippery role that may be savior or trafficker depending on how you read it, and Regina Hall lending sharp gravitas. The action is relentless, and yes, sometimes wickedly funny. My screening crowd roared when the ugliest villains—dripping with xenophobia and hate—met their brutal ends.
The film’s beating heart isn’t the politics or the pyrotechnics. It’s the fragile bond between Bob and his daughter Willa (a breakout turn from Chase Infiniti). Willa is the prize everyone’s fighting over, yet she’s just a teenager desperate for normalcy. Bob’s fierce devotion to her, his desperate insistence that she see another tomorrow, gives the film its true weight. Without that father-daughter story, “One Battle” would collapse under its own fire and fury.
For me, though—and I suspect for many others—the politics overshadow the story. “One Battle After Another” may earn praise as a daring, even classic Anderson entry. But its willingness to pour gasoline on an already blazing America is a choice I can’t quite overlook.
“One Battle After Another,” directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, and Chase Infiniti, releases this weekend from Warner Brothers Entertainment. It is rated R for violence and pervasive language.
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