The great thing about watching “One Battle After Another” on your cellphone is that you can fast-forward through most of it. There is no way I could have sat through this two-and-a half hour ode to self-indulgence by gifted filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson in a movie theatre.
The film opens with with a flashback, as the radical group French 75, led by Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) and Bob “Ghetto Pat” Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) raid a detention center, freeing immigrants and humiliating Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn). Perfidia gives birth to Willa, who presume is Bob’s daughter, but she then disappears into witness protection after betrayals fracture the group. Lockjaw, spared prison, – he was having a kinky master-and—servant affair with Perfidia – begins hunting down revolutionaries.
Fast-forward about sixteen years. Bob now lives off-grid with a teenage Willa (Chase Infiniti). His past catches up with him when Lockjaw resurfaces and Willa vanishes.
Now, if I read that short tandem repeat-capillary gel electrophoresis (STR-CGE) that Lockjaw runs on buccal swabs from himself and Willa, about 110 minutes into the movie, it is the colonel, not Bob, who is Willa’s real father. But is the gel real or is it a Lockjaw fabrication? Does Lockjaw want to connect with Willa or does he want to terminate her? Or both?
As Bob goes on a search for Willa’s whereabouts he reconnects with old allies like Sensei Sergio (Benicio del Toro) and Deandra (Regina Hall). They navigate safe houses, coded networks, and ideological clashes while trying to save Willa. Eventually, Bob and his comrades launch an assault on Lockjaw’s compound to rescue Willa, confronting the generational cost of radicalism.
