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IT’S ALL IN the title. The name of Paul Thomas Anderson‘s newest movie alone—One Battle After Another—invites thoughts of heart-pumping, fist-clenching action, and there’s certainly a whole lot of that in the film’s 2 hour and 42 minute runtime. But when Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Pat Calhoun (later known as Bob Valentine) declares, early on in the film, that “from this point on, it’s one battle after another” (cue the Leo meme), he’s talking about more than just gunfights, acts of revolution, and car chases.
One Battle After Another is, indeed, a big-time epic thriller adventure—but it’s also a story of a dad, played by DiCaprio, doing whatever he can, every day, to protect the daughter he’s been left to raise by himself. Through his revolutionary activity with the French 75, Bob built a romance with the strong, confident Perfidia St. James (Teyana Taylor)—and that eventually led to a daughter being born amidst their dangerous lives. But when you’re in this world, when you believe in what you believe in and fight for what you fight for, those battles exist anywhere you look. And without much of a choice, Perfidia exits the picture. Bob is left alone—in a pseudo-witness protection situation, after the French 75 were mostly captured or killed—to raise a daughter named Willa.
Following a thrilling opening act that brings the energy of Michael Mann‘s Heat to mind, the action jumps forward 16 years, and Bob is now middle-aged, zonked out of his mind, and no longer possessing the skills he did in his heyday. He still believes in everything he always did, but his passion is now more for smoking weed and drinking beer. Still, Bob is hyper-aware of the evils in the world. He’s paranoid, and Willa, now a teenager (and played by the fantastic Chase Infiniti), has had just about enough of him. But Bob knows he’s alone with a daughter to protect—for him, every day is one battle after another. Stoned battles, yes, but battles nonetheless.
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One Battle gets a lot of humor out of Bob’s day-in and day-out paranoia. He questions what Willa is learning at school. He questions her friends, wondering who she’s going to be spending with. He makes sure she has her very specifically constructed French 75 technology—which will bail her out of an emergency if one ever comes up. It’s all played for laughs when we see how much Bob has fried his brain in the 16 years since the opening chapter—and then, quickly, we see it put to the test.
The evil Bob knows is Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), a fascistic military man who was not only the nemesis of the French 75, but who had a sexual obsession with Perfidia—and is responsible for both her absence from Bob and Willa’s life, and the group’s disbandment. When Steven returns with a sinister, militaristic task force looking for Willa, Bob and the remaining associates of the French 75 jump into action with one goal: Find Willa. With the help of Sensei Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro), Bob gets to the crux of what the movie is really about: A dad trying to get his daughter back at any cost.
Bob and Willa spend a lot of time separated, but their relationship is the core of everything that makes this great and what makes almost every decision in the film a believable one. As Bob navigates the madness of what’s happening, we know why he’s going through all of this. We saw first-hand what Bob and Perfidia had to go through just to get here—as if the love of a father for his daughter wasn’t enough on its own. One Battle After Another makes a case for the power of parenthood: the drive a parent has for their child, PTA argues, is stronger than anything another force can put in their way. Bob is continuously tested by Lockjaw and his cronies, but there’s zero chance that’s going to deter him. What’s more of a hindrance turns out to be Bob’s own internal problems—he’s unable to remember a French 75 password for a rendezvous point, his own anxieties are out of control (that Sensei thankfully helps him soothe with a few Modelos here and there), and his expert revolutionary skills have completed eroded.
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Bob and Willa’s journey take them to a list of places only this kind of big, sweeping movie can: a hospital, a convent, a trap house, the trunk of a car, and off the top of a roof. This all leads to a climactic chase scene along a road that rises and falls like a roller coaster—and culminates after an explosion of violence with a cathartic, bittersweet hug. The villains of the film have all the actual power. They control who can get arrested and they have all the money. But we see the power that these real, meaningful relationships can have, and how those are ultimately what wins out.
This experience only strengthens Bob and Willa’s relationship. And while there’s no reversing anything—Bob’s brain is zapped and those old skills are not coming back—Willa closes the film believing in her parents, loving them, and carrying on what they believe in. As Tom Petty’s “American Girl” begins to play in the film’s closing moments, it’s still one battle after another for Bob and Willa, and it almost certainly always will be. But now it’s Willa’s battle, and Bob has no choice but to smile and be proud about the way things turned out.
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