One Battle After Another: A Review

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

Can one love something to death? One Battle After Another has been essentially declared this generation's Citizen Kane, a turning point in cinematic if not human history. One Battle After Another is a good movie. It is unfortunate that it will die of overpraise.

Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) is part of the French 75, a Leftist domestic terrorist group who will rescue undocumented migrants from a holding facility. Aiding her is Pat Calhoun, a young man who has the explosives meant to distract the military. During the raid on the Otay Mesa Immigration Center, Perfidia captures the commanding officer, Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn). Far from being upset, Lockjaw is sexually aroused by our black liberation queen. 

This does not stop him from going after all the French 75, who have moved on to bank robberies in the Symbionese Liberation Army style. Perfidia had been apprehended by Lockjaw at this time as well. However, she used her black sexual power on him. She also had become involved with Pat and had a daughter, Charlene, presumably with Pat as the father.

However, the call of revolution is too strong, so she goes to fight the good fight. That is, until she is captured. Now turning against her former cohorts, Lockjaw manages to eliminate almost all of them. Pat and his daughter manage to escape. Now, sixteen years later, Pat is Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio), hiding out in the northern California woods. He watches anxiously over his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti). He is also a pothead, permanently addled and paranoid about the world. Lockjaw, for his part, is desperate to join the Christmas Adventurers Club, a white supremacist group. Their admission standards are very high: his parentage must be American born by Gentiles and there must not be any interracial relationships current or past. 

That is an issue, as Lockjaw did indulge in le plaisir de le femme noir and may be Willa's biological father. With that, Lockjaw now must eliminate the evidence of his miscegenation indiscretion. That sets off a chain of events that put Willa in danger; with Bob too mentally fried to be much help, he has to rely on Willa's karate instructor, Sensei Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro). Sensei Sergio has been running the Latino Underground Railroad aka been a human smuggler. He is pretty much incidental to Operation Boot Steel, the immigration sweep that is really a pretext to get Willa. With friend and foe coming and going, will Willa survive? Will Lockjaw manage to hide his shameful past? Will Bob ever remember the passwords?

I think, given the current political climate, far too many on the Left and Right are reading far too much into One Battle After Another. I can see the temptation to look on One Battle After Another as some kind of anti-ICE epic or celebration of an Antifa-like worldview. Personally, I not only have no interest in such things, but think that they are all wildly misguided.

I think One Battle After Another mocks both sides. French 75 and the Christmas Adventurers Club are both foolish, two groups made up of totally comical lunatics and imbeciles. The latter is meant to be idiotic. They have such things as Jingle Bells being the secret knock. They greet each other with "Merry Christmas, Hail St. Nick" and end with "May St. Nick be with you". The former, conversely, is also moronic. One of them at the bank robbery going on about the power of "black vajay-jay" (I cleaned up the language). While French 75 may see themselves as the new Underground Railroad, they are actually human smugglers. They are also thoroughly incompetent and when they do manage to be successful in their crime spree, they take innocent people with them.

Perfidia is no heroine. She is a slut who abandons her child and puts herself first. She may think that she is putting "the cause/revolution" ahead. However, she turns in her colleagues before ultimately fleeing the Witness Protection Program. 

Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson (adapting Thomas Pynchon's Vineland) is fully aware of how all the characters are pretty much fools unto themselves. Bob was already bumbling and dimwitted even before he started smoking pot in mass quantities. Just before he gets notified that Lockjaw is on his way, he is seeing The Battle of Algiers on television. This was clearly done to draw a parallel between how Bob and French 75 saw themselves and how they were totally removed from the Algerian version. Bob, who is so out of it that he can no longer remember the complex word puzzles meant to verify his identity, has a phone battle with Comrade Josh (Dan Chariton). Their argument sounds more like something that occurs when you are attempting to get through to a person versus a machine.

One Battle After Another, separate from whatever parallels to the current world that people want to put, is laughing at everyone's expense. Yes, Colonel Lockjaw is not someone to take seriously, starting with the name. However, when the obnoxious Willa is lecturing her father about how he could not have driven the car if he was intoxicated, Bob snaps, "I know how to drink and drive". How can you take a premise seriously when Willa is taking shelter at the convent of The Sisters of the Brave Beaver? Everything about One Battle After Another is not meant to be taken seriously. Far from it: we are supposed to laugh at all of them.

The film is fortunate to have a good set of performances. Leonardo DiCaprio is surprisingly amusing as Bob, bumbling father, loopy pothead and eventual rescuer of his daughter. Another standout is Benicio del Toro as the unflappable Sensei Sergio. He is quite Zen in his manner, but he also can wring out humor as a result of his seeming calmness. I do not remember if someone or if he referred to himself as the "Latino Harriet Tubman", but that was funny. 

As a side note, it does reflect again how the remnants of French 75 saw themselves as carrying on the work of the Underground Railroad. However, the latter was helping slaves escape bondage. The former was smuggling de facto slaves into America. I figure that there is a difference.

I think Sean Penn has been getting far too much praise as Lockjaw. He wavered between the serious and silly of Lockjaw, with his growl at times hard on the ears. I think Chase Infiniti did well as Willa, even if the role of the smart-alecky teen is not the most original. 

One successful element is Jonny Greenwood's score, which is minimalist while keeping up the tension and mood. One unsuccessful element is the length. At almost three hours, One Battle After Another soon feels its runtime. The ending is also a bit difficult to accept. It might have done better to not let the Christmas Adventurers Club get their revenge. 

One Battle After Another is good, but it is being wildly overpraised to where it almost breeds hostility against it. I think it might have worked better as a limited series and not tried to be so on-the-nose about the characters. Still, I think it worked overall. Fortunately, I do not expect there to be any more battles.

DECISION: B-