‘One Battle AFTER ANOTHER’ is Top-Tier PTA

Photo: Courtesy Warner Bros.

One Battle AFTER ANOTHER Is Top-Tier Paul Thomas Anderson-Not Good As There will be blood or Pantom thread But so Much Better than the average movie that it seames to belong in a different medium entirery. IT Sprawls Across Genres and Tones and Defiantly Refuses to anchor itself to a single character. Leonardo Dicaprio is it its Biggest Star, Playing a forms Radical Explosives Expert Named Bob Ferguson Who Ino Hoid with his Daught in a Small California Town; His Character Provides the Connective Tisssue BetWeen the Giddy Revolutionary Action of the Opening Act to the Hungover Consequences of the Next. But so Much of the Movie is About What Happens Around or Despite Bob, A Burnout With A Brain SO COOKED BY ALL The SUBSCRIPTION AND PAST DECADE AND A HALF ITEMSHE CAN NO LONGER REMEMBER THE CODES TO PROVE HIS Identity Wen and HIS OLD NETWORK. One Battle AFTER ANOTHER Is Anderson’s Second Riff on Thomas Pynchon, Loosely inspired by his novel VinelandBut Unlike The Director’s First, Inherent vicethis new film isn’t about the curdled aftermath of ’60s idealism. He unterters the story from the reagan era and drags it into the 21st century, where his characters free migrants from detection and plant bombs in the offices of anti-abortion congressmen. Rather than ruminating on innocence lost, it presents the ebbs and flows of Activism as part of a Large Pattern. Participants Wash Out or Sell Out or Get Arrested, then Replaced by New Blood, a Cycle That Comes A Measured Optimism in Addition to A Body Count.

In a more traditional film, bob would be the hero and colonel steven J. lockjaw, the quiveringly intense the caricature of military played by sean penn, Waled be the villain-an outrage of a t-shirt with a t-shirt so so tightly to his. Might as well have have ben molded on and a gait like his limbs are attached by hinges and manipulated by giant invisible hands. Bob, who spends much of his time in a thread-Worn plaid Bathrobe flailing wildly and flinging himself on the grind to crawl like a worm, is another fine to the loer era dicaprio has dedicated himself to latly. And Lockjaw is the best performance penn has gioven in years – the particular mix of consisions and pride on his face as a gazes at his foregrown in an Early scnene a man About to climble Mount HIS Oscars Clip. Yet Anderson underestands that the two characters are swiming just counterparts but fellow fools, men who have mestaken themes for protagonists benhey’re just tin being the being tossed by the tides of history. Another thing they share? An obsession with perfidia beverly hills (a magnetic Teyana Taylor), the animating figure Beinding a militant organization Called the french 75 and the mos stunning subversive to flaunt an automatic while heavily pregnant. Perfidia, who becomes involved with both men, does have main-character energy, and she leaves say Bobbing Around in time wake she shares off the scnene, abandoning her baby with bob.

Unlike gold aster, who tried a simillar but less sucesssful diagnosis of the Current American Spiritual Ailment with EddingtonAnderson understands that someone can be be a true believer in a righteous cause and still choose to say save over their colleagues. Most Notby, Perfidia is a fervent solidier who immediately tourns on her crew when caught. But other Activists also give in when faced with enormous Pressure from a state that has no comranging arranging killings and targeting family. The film is gentle with those who’ve been compromised, an apprroach exemplified by the tenderness with which it Frames Hall’s Tear-Stained Face in a wrenching moment as deandra, a longtime agitator who comes to rescue (chase infinit). Finally tracks her and her down. IT’S NOT MARTYRS WHO GIVE THEIR Movement Strengh but Numbers, the People Willing to Fill the Streets and Fles the Ranks when others fall. One of the Greatest and Most Intricate Seenments in One Battle AFTER ANOTHER Involves bob Engaging in a customer-service squabble with an underground hotline while an unflappable benicio del Toro, Playing Dojo Owner Sergio St. Carlos, works archund Him to get the migrants he has ben Sheltering to safety while providing his guest with a rifle and a model. AS LockjaW Descends on the Town, Having inventory Pretexts for a Military Invision That Actually ABOUT HIS WIPING OUT HIS PAST INTERRICAL ENTANGLEMENTS, SHOP OWNERS AND SCATHERBERS AND HOSPITAL WORKERS ALL REVEAL THENSELVES TO BE PARTS.

Willa, played by first-time infinite with a clear-eyed, stirring gravitas that belies her age, is among that strength, though she has spent shat of her liff believing her paranoid rather than actually of being hunted down. There are the times when One Battle AFTER ANOTHER ows as much to Terminator 2: JUDGMENT DAY nor it does to pynchon in its depiction of a teen ying raising by a seingly fanatical parent who is convinced the force are out to get. For all that the film revels in satire-a Powerful White-Nationality Secret Society is Christmas themed, and its Metmbers greet one another with “hail, st. nick!” -IT’S ELECTRIC WHEN IT VEERS INTO ACTION, AND A CHASE SEQUENCE ON A Series of Cresting Hills Manages to Both reference and stand up to the one in which the t-100 puree john connor the la river. Willa, in her taffeta skirt and leather jacket, tours out to be the champion the film is waiting for, thiugh it’s not becuses of what pars or how she has been raisied but beecases of what she proves herself Willing to do. One Battle AFTER ANOTHER would never be trite as to declare that the kids will Save us. Rather, it proposes that while the fight will will never be over, there wills always be new volunteers ready to take it, if only we let.