One Battle After Another – Review

Cert – 15, Run-time – 2 hours 42 minutes, Director – Paul Thomas Anderson

When their location is revealed, a former revolutionary (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his teenage daughter (Chase Infiniti) are separated and caught between running and chasing.

Not even shakey-chair 4D can create the feeling of your stomach leaping and dropping with the rise and fall of a rollercoaster, yet in the tension of a car chase Paul Thomas Anderson can. The camera lies low, almost touching the road; racing along the rise and fall of the almost empty track of hills. Occasionally cutting to the rear-view mirror or long shots of the surroundings, there’s a growing tension throughout the chase, heightened by the internal thrills that Anderson conjures up.

It’s a feeling brought to a number of the action sequences throughout the writer-director’s latest, much of which is centred around running and chasing. Former revolutionary Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) finds himself caught between the pair when, after 16 years of hiding, his location is revealed and he must find his teenage daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), before escaping.

DiCaprio, alongside Jonny Greenwood’s excellent score of rumbling, fluid tension, perfectly captures the rushing panic and fear or Bob’s mind as he’s thrown into a situation he may have thought would never arrive, albeit still some way prepared for it. Hot on his tail, alongside Willa’s, is Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn); a familiar face to Bob’s partner Perfidia (Teyana Taylor) – leading much of what we see when it comes to the early revolutionary and chase action in the film. With a consistent scowl on his face, Penn brings a darkness to Lockjaw with a fearful anger easily brought to the surface in the wake of anything that delays or gets in the way of his hopes and plans.

Anderson and editor Andy Jurgensen often cut to his perspective in-between Bob, Willa and other parties who may be involved in the various hunts at play with ease. Yet, even with a near three-hour run-time there’s little that feels irrelevant or as if it’s overstuffing the film in any way. The screenplay is certainly tight, and one of the strongest of the year, with occasional patches of dry humour amongst the grander bursts of chaos as Bob, donning large sunglasses to both remain hidden and not show he’s stoned, fails to remember passwords and coded phrases he hasn’t had to use for 16 years.

Intentional breaks in the action might mean there’s a slight break from the fast pace of the extended sequences they appear between, but for the most part there’s a consistent pace to One Battle After Another. One brought about through the constantly moving nature of the events – like cogs on a treadmill – and the tension that grows throughout the sequences, especially as forces preventing Bob from reuniting with his daughter get closer to either of them.

As a chase and action movie Anderson has created something very effective, however the wider narrative and context that’s given – the world of still-connected revolutionaries and how they keep track of things – adds further detail and more to the relationships at hand. Indeed, the film wouldn’t be the same if we were just thrown in and didn’t see Bob’s relationship with Perfidia form over the course of their revolutionary action, all brilliantly captured by cinematographer Michael Bauman, or the ways in which their lives in some way diverge once they become parents. It’s this that provides not just context but the lens through which the rest of the film is viewed, increasing the suspense and eventual chaos as everything kicks off in the sprawling race DiCaprio’s frenzied protagonist embarks on to reach his daughter before it’s too late.

The idea of hiding, chasing and fleeing takes on different guises and meanings throughout as the situations the characters, particularly Bob, find themselves in change depending on the plan, or lack of, that not just they have but those after and in front of them also do. The shifts and layers throughout emphasise the constantly moving nature of the narrative and the momentum that the film has as a whole with solid effect. It reminded me at one point of Mad Max: Fury Road, although not largely confined to machines and vehicles. Largely in terms of the scale and aforementioned movement of the film, and the feeling of a nearby threat also caught up in the rushed frenzy. Part way through I sat amazed that Warner Bros would stump up at least an estimated $130 million for this, but the final rather un-studio product, they seem to have had difficulty marketing it, is very much worth it. With the elements coming together for a tense, thrilling set of frantic yet connected chases.

While in-between sequences may be more of a slow down than a breather, much of One Battle After Another captures the chaos between fleeing and chasing. With DiCaprio and Jonny Greenwood on great form multiple cat-and-mouse situations converge with a rising tension and consistent thrill.