The 1 Problem With ‘One Battle After Another’

“One Battle After Another,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s talk-of-the-town action-comedy epic, is still dominating the mainstream movie discourse, and it’s very easy to see why.

The film, which hit theaters in September, follows a band of radicals who go into hiding after one resistance mission turns deadly. Cut to 16 years later, washed-up, paranoid revolutionary Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) has been living off the grid with his self-reliant daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti), after being abandoned by her mother, the former activist Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), as a baby. When Bob’s longtime nemesis, Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), resurfaces and Willa goes missing, the former radical and his daughter are forced to battle the consequences of their pasts.

That’s the shorthand version of a sprawling, nearly three-hour plot packed with themes of political violence, power, white supremacy, good vs. evil and so much more. As overloaded as that sounds, Anderson pulls it off with an uber talented ensemble cast — which includes Regina Hall, Benicio del Toro, Wood Harris, Tony Goldwyn and rapper Junglepussy — and a bonkers plot that’s as chaotic as it is compelling.

After seeing the film myself, I can say the hype is just about everything critics have hailed it to be, for the most part anyway. It’s bold, kinetic, thrilling, highly entertaining and so nerve-racking that you might be on the edge of your seat the entire time, especially during the car chase scenes at the end. As far as performances go, Infiniti is the biggest standout, even as a newcomer making her film debut. Taylor is a close second, even though her presence is limited to the first act.

Those are some of the film’s strengths, but calling it a “masterpiece,” as some critics have, is a stretch, in my opinion, largely due to some of the questionable racial dynamics that undercut the storytelling. The issues begin with the fetishization of Taylor’s character and continue through a subplot involving Willa’s mixed-race parentage — namely, a paternity case between Bob and Lockjaw, on account of an assumed one night stand the latter and Perfidia had. That fact later complicates Lockjaw’s membership to an elite white supremacist club, which is a whole other ordeal that leans way too much on Perfidia as a plot device instead of a whole being — which feels especially uncomfortable given her absence for most of the movie.

But even with those flaws, I still enjoyed “One Battle After Another” for what it was, an adrenaline-fueled ride. Some dots just needed more connecting for it to make better sense.

“One Battle After Another” is now playing in theaters.