One Battle After Another Review

 

One Battle After Another is an epic action thriller loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland. Production was handled by Ghoulardi Film Company with Warner Bros. Pictures doing distributing. Paul Thomas Anderson both wrote and directed.

The story is, former revolutionary "Ghetto" Pat Calhoun is washed up paranoid drug addict but still tries to be the best father he can be to his daughter. Things take a dark turn when an old enemy comes back and kidnaps Pat's daughter. Now Pat needs to quickly get it together and rescue his kid.

Initial Reaction

Honestly the only reason I went to see this was because I heard lots of positive reviews. So I was curious about all of the hype.

Cons

I've got nothing.

Middle Ground

Oh boy, there's quite a bit. Let's start off with the pacing. At first it starts off pretty well. But soon it is a bit on the slow side, nothing too dramatic but you can feel things have slowed down. Where it truly drags is during the final act. For me it really felt like PTA really wanted to milk all he could with the emotional reunion and ending. Then there's the tone. It bounces back from gritty action to screwball comedy. This made the movie have a whiplash effect. One moment I'm suppose to feel intense then next thing I know we're being funny. The last thing I'll touch on for this section of the review is the characters. First there's Pat and his revolutionary buddies. It's really hard to root for them as the good guys when they commit crimes that no normal person would defend. I'm serious one of their crimes is a bombing. I get Anderson was more than likely going for flawed anti-heroes, which if any of you have followed me since the beginning you'd know I like that stuff, but here I just don't think Anderson nailed it. But I guess it wasn't all bad since PTA did show some humanity with Pat (aka Bob) and his bond with his daughter Willa. And then there's the villain, Lockjaw. Honestly he's not a good villain. Primarily because he's get this, a racist white guy. How many times have we gotten this villain archetype? How many years have we gotten this type of villain or variant? Going on ten years or close to? Seriously I've read comments from people from all walks of life you have grown tired of this trope.

Pros

Now there are quite a few good aspects of One Battle After Another. One being the action. The action in this very realistic and raw. You get intense shootouts and thrilling high-speeed car chase. Now there is a use of shaky cam, but it's more used to the chaos of these scenes then a cheap gimmick or poorly done filmmaking. Then there's the performances. Leonardo DiCaprio is unsurprisingly hits it out of the park, bringing some great comedic moments. Probably a good contender with his other comedic roles like in The Wolf of Wall Street and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Now despite issues with his character being the newest cliché, I do admit Sean Penn delivered a great performance. He brings out Lockjaw's menace and his absurd bluster. Then there's Chase Infiniti. Now despite being a newcomer she surprisingly does a fantastic job. She brought a lot of heart in otherwise chaotic story. The last thing I'll credit is the cinematography. Michael Bauman did an incredible job, it's amazing how beautiful this movie looks. His lighting choices enhances the more gritty side of the movie. The naturalistic light has a great harsh sunlight and the more urban settings have some good neon flickering lights. Bauman's cinematography elevated Paul Thomas Anderson's directing. So two thumbs up to you Mr. Bauman 👍🏻👍🏻.

So yeah, despite some good stuff I found this movie not to be bad, but it is massively overhyped. So overhyped I'm already seeing articles calling this a "cultural phenomenon". I thought a movie need a year or two or more to achieve that status but apparently it only takes two or three days.

My final rating is, Okay.

That's going to do it for me. Come back on Monday, Sept 29th, for part four of Looking Back at the Films of 2024. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.