One Battle After Another
Paul Thomas Anderson returns to top form with a madcap, brutal comic thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio as an addict on the run.
The revolution will not be televised: Teyana Taylor in action
Image courtesy of Warner Bros.
There are few filmmakers around today whose work is as consistently cinematic, powerful and daring as that of Paul Thomas Anderson. But as so often with directors of his calibre and originality, Anderson’s films do not always register with audiences, although they are invariably hard to ignore. Returning to the source material of the great American novelist Thomas Pynchon, if only loosely (his 2014 Inherent Vice also drew on Pynchon), Anderson’s world here is a bracing mix of the recent past and the present and perhaps even the future. Utilising his characteristic use of long takes, close-ups and flawed protagonists, the director detonates a shocking and kinetic narrative about a divided America. Weaving numerous incendiary themes into his fabric – racism, parenthood, addiction, bigotry, revolution, white supremacy and illegal immigration – Anderson leaves the mind reeling.
Starting some sixteen years in the past, the film asserts its cinematic élan with a striking opening shot of the revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills (an unfiltered Teyana Taylor) striding alongside a flyover, beneath which cowers an immigrants’ detention centre. Anderson has composed it like a split screen image, separating the have-nots beneath from those who have speeding along the freeway. It’s a striking pictorial metaphor and Anderson retains a strong visual command throughout. He has also mustered excellent work from his regular contributors, in particular his cinematographer Michael Bauman, editor Andy Jurgensen and composer Jonny Greenwood, the latter whose propulsive, dissonant score helps to keep the viewer’s nerves on edge.
What follows is merciless as Perfidia, a member of the revolutionary group ‘French 75’, rescues a group of immigrants, while taking time to demean one Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), an act of humiliation from which he draws a strange sexual excitement. Perfidia is quite a sexual being herself, although she reserves her passion (and her body) for explosives specialist Bob Ferguson (a twitchy Leonardo DiCaprio), seeming to get her own kicks from Bob’s techno talk of pyrotechnics.
Beneath all the violence and kinetic action there are layers of black humour that alleviate the darkness. DiCaprio’s anti-hero Bob Ferguson, a revolutionary who has gone to seed, is certainly a comic if tragic figure, who spends half the movie running around (and driving in) his dressing gown, half stoned. On the other side of the dramatic spectrum, Sean Penn delivers one of his most chilling displays of male chauvinism, dented by a dodgy gait (a war wound?) and facial tic. He is a genuinely frightening presence, whose amoral stance wires the movie. One should also point out the welcome presence of newcomer Chase Infiniti, who provides the heart and pulse of the film, as the daughter of the revolutionary Perfidia and apparently the only American schoolgirl without a mobile phone. Meanwhile, Anderson himself provides us with a bravura piece of filmmaking which even at 161 minutes never stops for a breath. He has packed so much into his movie, culturally, politically and historically, along with an array of colourful characters, that another fifteen minutes would not have gone amiss.
JAMES CAMERON-WISLON
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti, Alana Haim, Wood Harris, Shayna McHayle, Paul Grimstad, Dijon Duenas, Tony Goldwyn, Starletta DuPois, D.W. Moffett, Kevin Tighe, Jim Downey, Eric Schweig, Tisha Sloan, James Raterman, April Grace, and the voice of Jena Malone.
Dir Paul Thomas Anderson, Pro Adam Somner, Sara Murphy and Paul Thomas Anderson, Screenplay Paul Thomas Anderson, inspired by the 1990 novel Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, Ph Michael Bauman, Pro Des Florencia Martin, Ed Andy Jurgensen, Music Jonny Greenwood, Costumes Colleen Atwood.
Ghoulardi Film Company-Warner Bros.
161 mins. USA. 2025. UK and US Rel: 26 September 2025. Cert. 15.
