The Gist
A man goes into hiding with his daughter after his ‘local-terrorism’ group is targeted by the Government. Years later the military continue to hunt them.
The Review
Even the mere thought of director Paul Thomas Anderson teaming up Leonardo DiCaprio should be enough to excite any film lover. The man responsible for stunning films like Boogie Nights, Inherent Vice and Licorice Pizza directing a movie starring an actor who rarely makes a bad movie is certain to result in some cinematic magic, right?
Well you would expect so – but what none of us factored into that equation is that perhaps both of them were due for a miss. To be honest One Battle After Another isn’t exactly a terrible film it just doesn’t reach the heights of either Paul Thomas Anderson or Leonardo DiCaprio’s past films.
The film centres around a couple known as Pat Calhoun (Leonardo Di Caprio – Titanic) and Perfidia Beverley Hills (Teyana Taylor – Coming 2 America) who are members of a domestic terrorist organisation known as French 75. There plan is to free people from a fascist Government that is in charge of the USA.
However shortly after giving birth to a baby Perfidia’s life is changed forever when she is arrested after a bank robbery and she finds herself in the hands of Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn – Milk) a man who not only wants to bring down French 75 but is also so severely sexual attracted her he is almost stalking her.
As Perfidia is forced to testify against her friends in order to save herself Pat takes off with their baby daughter to begin a new life far removed from his days of political activism.
Cut to 16 years later and Pat, now know as Bob, is living in a town in the middle of nowhere that seems to what to protect the illegal immigrants and so called ‘enemies of the state’ that live within. Bob is a shadow of his former self as years of drug and alcohol addiction have left him both mentally and physically damaged.
Meanwhile his daughter, now known as Willa (Chase Infiniti – Presumed Innocent), is a surprisingly well adjusted teenager who excels at school and has been learning marital arts under the watchful eye of Sensei Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio Del Toro – Sicario). But once again their freedom (and lives) are put in jeopardy when Lockjaw turns up in town on the hunt for them with full military backing.
To be honest the general plot of One Battle After Another works pretty well. In today’s political climate in the United States a story revolving around domestic terrorism has an air of realism about it and the film itself makes a powerful companion piece for recent films like Civil War and Eddington.
The problem here is that not only does the film runs way too long but it also feels like Anderson loses control of this film at the screenwriting stage. There is way too much going on in this film and perhaps if he had been able to trim away some of the pointless side stories or redundant characters this could have been a much more serviceable film.
Perhaps the best example I can give of that issue is the fact one character at one moment meets their demise in a way that would have been satisfactory to the audience only to then be resurrected for an extra part of their story that certainly doesn’t mean to be there.
There are also parts of this film that also feels like they are contradicting themselves in a way. On way hand you have brilliant performances from Teyana Taylor, Benicio Del Toro and Chase Infiniti and on the flipside you have Leonardo DiCaprio being wasted in a role where he never gets to show his true calibre while Sean Penn gets to play one of the interesting characters of the film but is dangerously allowed to ‘over-act’ at times. Its during those times where the audience is taken out of the realism and reminded that they are watching a film.
More of a shame with Penn and DiCaprio’s characters is the fact that they are never explored properly. Lockjaw had the potential of being one of the most interesting characters to grace our screens in a long, long time – an Army officer so racist he wants to join an All-White hate group but at the same time finding himself being driven crazy by the fact that he is sexually attracted to a black woman. Sadly, though the ins and outs of his character are never thoroughly explored and he becomes a walking cliché.
Likewise, DiCaprio’s character of Bob. He is set up as an explosives expert but by the time he needs to fight to save his daughter he becomes a bumbling idiot that almost feels like he is there for comedic relief. Imagine the intrigue that could have been generated if Anderson had chosen to explore the notion of what happens when the hero wastes away but in a serious rather than a comical form.
The Verdict
At times One Battle After Another does make some poignant remarks on modern day American society but those moments are few and far in-between in a movie that is over-bloated and seems to dangerously lose its way at times.
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