Spoiler Warning for “One Battle After Another”

When you combine one of the defining filmmakers of our time with the biggest movie star in the world, both at the peak of their powers, you expect movie magic. 

“One Battle After Another,” PTA’s most ambitious project to date, is indeed movie magic and for my money, the defining cinematic experience of the year. 

The story follows a former revolutionary turned burn-out single father Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) as the life he tried desperately to leave behind comes after him in full force. 

We first meet Bob in a past life, before his forced name-change, when he was Pat Calhoun, a munitions expert who makes things go boom at the behest of the anti-capitalist, often violent and incredibly excitable militant group,  the French 75. 

Affectionately called “Ghetto Pat” by his comrades, he is eager to be a valuable member of the revolution and even more eager to please the dynamic shot-caller of the French 75, Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor). 

They strike up a quick infatuation turned romance, barely able to keep their hands off each other long enough to press the detonator.

Perfidia’s sexual daliances are plentiful, even sleeping with a U.S. Colonel, Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) who develops a strange psycho-sexual obsession with her after she humiliates him during a 75 raid on a migrant detention facility in the film’s opening moments. 

Things change for the couple when Perfidia gets pregnant and it becomes quite clear to both the audience and Pat that she may not be the type who can leave the revolution behind, even for the benefit of her unborn child. 

When her daughter, Willa, is born, Perfidia struggles with her own identity, constantly feeling pulled between her role as mother and radical, between caregiver and soldier, voicing her own jealousy at no longer being the sole priority in Bob’s life. 

Push comes to shove and Perfidia makes her choice. 

Against the wishes of Bob, who easily transitions from bomb maker to diaper changer, she leaves Bob and Willa and returns to the front lines of the revolution. 

A few months later, Perfidia has increasingly spiraled and become more uncontrolled and impulsive, firing two shots during an armed robbery at a bank and killing a security guard, sending the French 75 scrambling like rats on a sinking ship. 

Perfidia is caught, handcuffed to a hospital bed and destined for a life behind bars if the state is feeling benevolent or the electric chair if they feel she would be better served as an example to the wider public. 

Visited by Lockjaw, she is offered a lifeline: witness protection in exchange for flipping on the French 75 and condemning every friend she has in the world to death or jail in her place. 

Perfidia rats, the French 75 as we know them are broken and Bob flees with baby Willa in a laundry basket in the dead of night. 

16 years later, Bob resembles Jeff Bridges in “The Big Lebowski” more than any revolutionary freedom fighter. 

A substance-abusing recluse hidden away in the woods outside the sanctuary city of Baktan Cross, California, whose only involvement in the revolution is watching and reciting dialogue from “The Battle of Algiers” on repeat. 

Willa (Chase Infiniti) has grown into the spitting image of her mother, her seemingly inherited stubbornness and insistent self-reliance on full display in the face of Bob’s easy-going and conflict-averse parenting style. 

By any measure, things are pretty good for the pair. 

Bob spends his days in a haze of weed smoke and war film dialogue while Willa leads a normal teenage life, sans the smartphone that Bob forbids her from having. 

When Willa leaves to attend a school dance, Bob sends her on her way with a smile and a charming if begrudging “Love you Bob,” from Willa. 

But the life that Bob tried so hard to leave behind for the sake of his daughter is about to make an appearance, threatening to upend everything he has worked to keep her safe from. 

Lockjaw is being probed for membership in the ultra-exclusive “Christmas Adventurer’s Club,” a white supremacist group with its fingers in all manner of business and political inner circles. 

The only thing holding back his membership is the possibility that he has fathered an interracial child, Willa, from his one night stand with Perfidia all those years ago, a potential death blow to his candidacy and one that he is not willing to risk. 

He sets his sights on Willa in the aims of proving his innocence and drags Bob back into the fight to save the only family he has left. 

What follows is a two-hour roller coaster ride of thrills, laughs and general insanity. 

From high-speed chases to weed-growing nuns, the film maintains a frenetic pace that hardly gives the audience a chance to catch their breath, mirroring the desperate and frantic state of our characters as they embark on mad dashes to their own unique ends. 

Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson is at his absolute best in this action thriller that is sure to dazzle and bewilder even the most cynical movie-goer. 

Performances from Sean Penn and DiCaprio stand out as true contenders for their respective peaks in their already legendary careers, and newcomer Chase Infiniti shines. 

For action film fanatics and pretentious high-brow cinephiles alike, “One Battle After Another” is the rare genre bender that pervades any one definition and truly must be seen to be appreciated. 

Polish up those Academy Awards, Hollywood, particularly that long overdue “Best Director” nod for PTA, because this film is already in the short list for “Movie of the Decade” in my mind.

Once you see it, it’ll be in yours too. 

Categories: Arts & Entertainment