ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER – Review by Cate Marquis
In the action/comedy/thriller One Battle After Another director Paul Thomas Anderson gives us a paragon of top-notch film-making, outstanding from a technical viewpoint and electrifying as cinema to boot. But what really won me over is the “dad” story at the center of it all. Fellow revolutionaries and lovers Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) are committed to changing the world through acts of sabotage that disrupt the flow of money to the top while not hurting people. But when Perfidia becomes pregnant and gives birth, everything changes. While she is still devoted to the revolutionalry cause, and leaves to pursue it, Bob is now devoted to his daughter and goes into hiding. Years later, the past comes back to haunt dad and now-teen daughter Willa (an amazing Chase Infiniti), in the form of a relentless Marine Colonel named Lockjaw (a hilarious yet terrifying Sean Penn), who is on his own private mission.FIND his daughter who is abducted. And this daughter, played by Chase Infiniti – wow- is no helpless damsel but a relentlessly resourceful young woman, much to the frustration of ram-rod straight Col. Lockjaw. The rest of the cast are superb as well, including Benicio del Toro as the daughter’s cool-as-ice Sensei. Still. the gripping ‘what-happens-next’One Battle After Another has one laugh or one thrill after another, including a dizzying, cinematically-brilliant chase sequence on a steeply hilly desert road. But the heart of the film belongs to daddy and daughter and their unbreakable bond. One Battle After Another hits all the marks of great movie-making.
