This American action film tells the story of a group of ex-revolutionaries who attempt to rescue a daughter of one of them, who has been kidnapped.
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER. Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Chase Infiniti, and Teyana Taylor. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Rated M (Mature themes, violence, coarse language and sexual references). 170 min.
Review by Peter W Sheehan, Jesuit Media Australia
The film is a black comedy based loosely on the novel, “Vineland”, authored by Thomas Pynchon and published in 1997. The film was principally photographed in the USA and Leonardo DiCaprio plays a hard-living, drug-addicted revolutionary, Bob Ferguson, whose daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), has been kidnapped by the enemy. Sean Penn sinisterly plays the film’s villain, Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, and Benicio del Toro is a comrade of DiCaprio who plays fast and loose with guns. The movie is written and co-produced by the film’s Director, Paul Thomas Anderson.
The budget for this movie exceeded 140 million dollars. The high expense promises explosive scenarios that are strong in action and the film delivers them. The film also addresses a number of political and cultural issues that lie hidden in the American psyche. It depicts, for example, a Society where passwords abound and DiCaprio acts a scene where he struggles to remember codes, and can’t; it also deals with the pursuit of freedom (at any cost). This is a movie that subjects the life of a revolutionary to rules and controls that must be followed, and if they aren’t practiced, help will not be forthcoming.
As a result of these kinds of predicaments, the film unexpectedly features revolutionaries who are unable to play, or even object to, the rules they have pledged to follow. Leonardo DiCaprio takes the role of a manic hippie who becomes an antigovernment activist. He calls upon the help of a motley group of revolutionaries to help rescue his kidnapped daughter, and he is totally unsure about the rules that make revolutionary life an easy one to practise.
This is a high-action movie with social bite. DiCaprio brings an unexpected touch to revolutionary action, and he is supported by an extensive cast of actors who have similar difficulties to his own. It should be noted, however, that en route to the final scene that reunites daughter with father, the film delivers a movie that confronts viewers with strong racial bigotry, physical violence, and sexual mayhem. A simple M classification rating for the movie understates the film’s likely impact.
Peter Sheehan, an Associate of Jesuit Media