Possessed with a revolutionary spirit, One Battle After Another is both Paul Thomas Anderson’s funniest film and one of his most urgent. The director’s tenth feature, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn in a two-hander with deadly consequences, marks his first return to a fully contemporary setting since his early career. Gone is the gauzy haze and nostalgia of period pieces; here, he plants his flag in a rawer, more immediate America. One riddled with problems. Anderson wraps the plot around our current sociopolitical anxieties, marrying a blisteringly sharp vision of unchecked government agencies playing Cowboys and Indians with real-world immigrant struggles. But at its core, One Battle After Another is a story about a father trying to protect his daughter, the kind of premise that in lesser hands would be played straight as genre: a simple man-on-a-mission revenge story. What could have been a standard Taken-esque snatch-and-grab thriller takes on towering dimension in PTA’s visionary hands. He uses the political backdrop not just for setting, but as a launchpad for a statement about America that is incisive, inflammatory, and deeply satirical. Gut-bustlingly so on many occasions, including a scene where white supremacists invoke the term “semen demon” with terrifying sincerity. The absurdity doesn’t undercut the message; it sharpens it.
