Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Chase Infiniti
Have I Seen It Before: Nope.
Did I Like It: Clearly, One Battle After Another is one of the best films of the year. It is entertaining, visually interesting, well-acted, and probably most importantly, pointedly timely*. DiCaprio may be giving his best performance here, leaning into his aging persona without feeling the need to make it a punchline, as he occasionally did in Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood (2019). Some of the villains are a little over-wrought. Penn chews scenery regularly, but the masters he serves are funny, although I’ll admit just how amusing they are diminishes as time goes on.
And that’s the only real complaint I have about the film. At times, it feels too long. Themes are visited and re-visited perhaps one too many times. Points are perhaps belabored, distracting from the whole.
But let’s be candid: I’m not going to be the first person to say that this film runs a bit long in places. I’m not going to be the first person to say that Anderson’s films tend to run too long. Not by a long-shot. It may be his signature. What’s more, I can’t imagine that this complaint hasn’t gotten back to him. He’s been making films that felt long for his entire career. We can forgive this when James Cameron does it. We can forgive Martin Scorsese when he does it. We can’t just walk into a Paul Thomas Anderson film, accept that he is going to do it, and then enjoy it despite there being breaks throughout the film where our attention is free to wander? Of course we can do it, and judging by the responses, most people are.
*Good rule of thumb: if the conservative internet ecosphere complains about a film, it is probably worth seeing. If they are focused on one element of a film, doubly so. If the film wasn’t worth watching, they probably wouldn’t cover it in the first place. At the very least, their coverage wouldn’t find its way into your social media feeds.