One Battle After Another

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another follows a former revolutionary (Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bob) as he attempts to rescue his daughter (Chase Infiniti’s Willa) from an evil soldier (Sean Penn’s Lockjaw). Filmmaker Anderson, armed with his own screenplay, delivers a periodically entertaining yet predominantly disappointing endeavor that gets off to an especially (and distressingly) underwhelming start, as the movie, which runs an insanely overlong 161 minutes (!), kicks off with an arms-length opening stretch that contains few elements designed to capture the viewer’s initial interest – with the decidedly less-than-conventional narrative, coupled with a proliferation of eye-rollingly oddball characters and happenings, doing little to allay the lackluster atmosphere. And while the picture admittedly does improve slightly once it progresses into a comparatively watchable midsection, One Battle After Another contains a whole host of unappealing attributes, including (and especially) an often astonishingly grating turn by Penn, that cumulatively diminish the impact of an exciting, satisfying climax – which does, in the end, confirm the film’s place as yet another mediocre misfire from a once great auteur.

** out of ****