The FBI Approves This Message

One Battle After Another Review — 3 out of 5 stars

Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street, Titanic) leads this action thriller written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights) as a former member of a militant activist group who goes on the run when his past catches up with him. This film boasts strong performances all around including a show-stealing turn from Benicio del Toro (Sicario, Traffic) and a breakout appearance for actress Chase Infiniti.

However, despite these terrific performances, the story's shallow treatment of its subject matter renders its emotional arc inert. As a result the film lacks a strong conclusion while also light on the usual adrenaline-fueled thrills common in other films in the action genre.

Analysis — contains spoilers

This is one of those films where I have to ask: am I watching the same movie? Based on the unanimous critical acclaim this film has already received, perhaps I walked into the live-action Lilo & Stitch on accident and didn't notice.

The moral framework of One Battle After Another is shockingly nihilistic, and even worse, it ends with unearned sentimental optimism. That's literally an impossible circle to square.

For the sake of this analysis, let's accept the premise this film offers in presenting the French 75 as a rough allegory to the Weather Underground. Historically, most people who join in with militant resistance groups are ideologically indoctrinated. In other words, they believe in the morality of their radical actions, they don't carry them out just because they're horny thrill-seekers.

It's not an exaggeration to say that Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyona Taylor) is entirely motivated by sex. Perhaps there were people like Perfidia within the Weather Underground somewhere. But the film never explores her psychology because she disappears from the story after she betrays everything she claimed to believe in, so she could shield herself from her own reckless actions.

Let's also accept the premise that the French 75 is still active and well-funded in the present day. Doing so requires us to ignore the fact that no contemporary example exists in real life because they were extrajudicially eradicated by the FBI. There are many reasons why we should not ignore that fact, but for the sake of this analysis, let's accept the premise anyway.

Similar issues arise in the construction of Col. Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn) as a character. Private clubs like the Christmas Adventurers certainly exist, but these organizations historically revolve around money and power. Instead of exploring the relationship between money and power in this film, Lockjaw is chiefly preoccupied with how racist the other members appear. Meanwhile, no one blinks an eye while a uniformed military squad executes civilians on domestic soil.

The film creates this historically incoherent swamp of characters and violence and seemingly finds it to be fertile ground for comedy. Then the final act veers the story into an equally incoherent ditch. In the end Lockjaw catches up to Willa (Chase Infiniti) but lets her go because he recognizes their shared blood. This is a dodgy metaphor considering Lockjaw tried to kill Willa's mother after impregnating her.

The way Perfidia and Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) discard their faith in the "revolution" is fundamentally nihilistic, and one must be equally nihilistic to find any sense of redemption in their story. Perfidia writes Willa an apology for all the time she missed, and Bob finally gets Willa a phone. But neither of them improve as parents as they are both absent from Willa's life at the beginning and end of the film.

If we accept Bob and Perfidia's moral redemption, we accept the nihilism with which those characters regarded their revolutionary beliefs. They never actually cared about the causes they championed, so why should we, right? Perhaps this is true in Paul Thomas Anderson's personal life, but it is certainly not a universal truth. What we are left with is a movie about a revolutionary trying to be a dad without a single revolutionary idea or example of fatherhood.