Paul Thomas Anderson, the mad man that you’re. Right here we now have a writer-director chargeable for a number of the most iconic and critically lauded movies of our time, from “Boogie Nights” to “There Will Be Blood,” lastly cashing within the clean verify he’s lengthy deserved. The result’s “One Battle After One other,” a large studio image shot on IMAX cameras, made with a scale and scope that authentic motion pictures nearly by no means get anymore.
That is Anderson at his boldest: a blistering political thriller that precisely captures the paranoia and dread of our fashionable hellscape on a staggering $130 million price range. How Anderson, whose largest world grosser up to now topped out round $75 million, satisfied Warner Bros. to fund a movie that isn’t based mostly on IP and doesn’t characteristic an oz. of spandex is a thriller. As a substitute, the superhero this time is Leonardo DiCaprio taking part in the function he was all the time (?) born to play: a washed-up revolutionary who likes to smoke pot and watch “The Battle of Algiers.”
Loosely impressed by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland” (Anderson reportedly requested Pynchon if he may cherry-pick components for the movie, and the writer agreed), “One Battle After One other” is, at its core, a narrative a couple of father and daughter navigating our fraught political panorama. DiCaprio sheds all traces of leading-man charisma. This isn’t “The Nice Gatsby.” He’s a depressed, alcoholic named Bob Ferguson, who spends a lot of the film in a beanie and tattered bathrobe, screaming into the cellphone as a result of he can’t keep in mind the code phrases from his radical previous.
That previous life has pressured Bob into witness safety in Colorado, the place he lives together with his daughter Willa (a breakout flip from Chase Infiniti). In a propulsive prologue, we study that Bob and Willa’s mom, Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), as soon as carried out elaborate assaults towards U.S. establishments, together with immigration detention facilities. These themes will polarize sure viewers, however Anderson by no means pauses to lecture. The political undertones are there, however what elevates the movie is the tenderness of its father-daughter story. The result’s each Anderson’s saddest and funniest works up to now. It additionally feels strikingly fashionable, regardless of being one of many uncommon contemporary-set movies he’s made. True to his kind, PTA even finds a believable technique of stripping cell telephones out of the narrative.
Sixteen years later, Bob’s quiet life unravels when a foe from his previous resurfaces: Captain Steven J. Lockjaw, performed by a shredded Sean Penn in his most magnetic function in over a decade. Lockjaw runs a migrant detention heart and is hellbent on discovering Bob and Willa. Penn hasn’t been this beefed-up in fairly a while, bringing a wild, maniac presence that’s bizarre in all the appropriate methods. His mission kicks off the movie’s second act, a taut sport of pursuit that builds to a jaw-dropping three-way freeway chase. Shot on old-school VistaVision by cinematographer Michael Bauman, the sequence pulsates with vitality and goes full pedal to the metallic on IMAX.
For all the stress, it’s refreshing how hysterical the film is. Benicio Del Toro almost steals the present as a dojo sensei who guides Bob via some ill-advised schemes involving rooftop parkour and taser-happy cops. DiCaprio, endlessly stumbling into disasters of his personal making, turns into the butt of a number of the movie’s largest laughs. There’s longtime PTA collaborator Johnny Greenwood’s electrifying rating, and a few nicely timed needle drops to maintain issues energized.
“One Battle After One other” is a uncommon factor: a brand new American traditional that reveals an auteur working on the highest degree, with assets often reserved for branded blockbusters. If it had been my $130 million on the road, I’m undecided I’d danger it on such a politically charged venture. However as a viewer, I’m grateful somebody did. For this reason we go to the flicks. Field workplace be damned.
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER opens in theaters Friday, September twenty sixth.