'One Battle After Another' Is a Shotgun Blast of Radical Thrills

One Battle After Another — the latest film from acclaimed American auteur Paul Thomas Anderson — slingshots you into the action. There is no hand-holding. There is only immediacy. 

Anderson drops us off with "Ghetto" Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), members of the fictional far-left revolutionary group the French 75, as they and a cohort of revolutionaries — a truly eclectic group of performers that includes PTA favorite Alana Haim, Wood Harris and Junglepussy — attempt to rescue a group of immigrants from a detention center somewhere in California. I could have spent the nearly three-hour runtime entirely with this crew. Alas, One Battle has plenty more to show us.

To say Anderson's action-thriller epic is a movie of the moment would be an understatement. One Battle features militant immigration officers rounding up suspected "criminals," secret white supremacist societies made up of powerful men and counterrevolutionary attacks on sanctuary cities. For a director who has been critiqued for setting his films — no matter how thematically timely — in the past, this is an urgently present movie. 

But don't let the headline-ready themes overwhelm you. This is also the most traditionally entertaining movie of Anderson's career. It is a propulsive, often hilarious machine, bouncing from one moment to the next with gleeful abandon, allowing the audience just enough time to catch our breath. 

After a 35-minute prologue, the film picks up 16 years later. Pat, now a paranoid burnout, is living in the sanctuary city of Baktan Cross under the alias Bob Ferguson with his and Perfidia's daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti). "Bob" is an overbearing but well-meaning semi-fuck-up of a dad. 

When family nemesis Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (a truly vile Sean Penn) begins a nationwide search for the pair, we're off to the races once again, with composer Jonny Greenwood's pulse-pounding score propelling us forward. During one of the third-act set pieces, the music sounds as if Pharrell has commissioned Greenwood for a Clipse beat. The Radiohead guitarist has once again produced a uniquely perfect score for a PTA film. 

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I'll let you discover the rest of the story — which was inspired by Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, but is far from a direct adaptation — in the theater. But I'd be remiss not to mention two of the film's emotional pillars: Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro), a sensei and local leader of the immigrant community in Baktan Cross; and Deandra (Regina Hall), a former member of the French 75. The two help Bob and Willa during their respective journeys, while providing a pathos-filled look into the film's chaotic wider world.  

In her film debut, Infiniti hangs with a Murderers' Row of respected actors. She is fierce and vulnerable in equal measure. And in his long-anticipated first collaboration with Anderson, DiCaprio turns in another killer performance. There is nothing funnier than a brimming-with-frustration DiCaprio let loose. (See also: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood and The Wolf of Wall Street.)

In a year full of critical and commercial hits for Warner Bros., it's fascinating to see the studio throw everything behind a genuinely radical movie — something that almost never happens at the studio level in modern American filmmaking. One Battle might not make its massive budget back, but if it can finally place a little golden statue on PTA's mantle — and this freewheeling epic just may have the juice to do so — even the accountants won't care.