Ticket 2 Ride

Welcome to Sunday Cinema. This week, a new film, One Battle After Another.

I knew that Leonardo DiCaprio stars in One Battle After Another, but that’s all I knew. Normally, I read up on films to decide whether I want to the theater experience (and expense). However, just the initial buzz told me this was the kind of film I should probably see. The film has an impressive cast including Sean Penn, Belicio Del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti. The film also boasts a 95 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, and a Metacritic score of 83 percent. Count me in!

Bob is a washed-up revolutionary who lives in a state of stoned paranoia, surviving off-grid with his spirited and self-reliant daughter, Willa. When his evil nemesis resurfaces and Willa goes missing, the former radical scrambles to find her as both father and daughter battle the consequences of their pasts. – summary from Rotten Tomatoes

The film is very long at 2 hours and 50 minutes. Too long? Maybe. The bigger marketing challenge is a film thats difficult to explain in a concise way, in order to get people interested in showing up. The description above is accurate, but it takes more to get seats in seats today. The film is wide in scope: there are many characters and the focus is rather broad. That’s a plus and a minus. Anderson aims high, which means this film needs to fully engage its audience, and the audience needs to stay with it. Honestly, there a couple of times early on that I could have bolted, but stayed in my seat. One of the reasons I stayed was the caliber of the performances. Leo is very good playing the struggling, unfocused character; he’s vulnerable, frazzled, directionless. Penn’s character is creepy and cartoonish, which is the right mix. Del Toro is wasted in the minor role; they don’t really give him anything to do.

Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti are terrific as mother and daughter, and Regina Hall is also wonderful. These are strong, committed and passionate women. It is their strength that carries the film.

There are a variety of character roles capably filled by Tony Goldwyn, Kevin Tighe, James Raterman, former SNL writer James Downey and rapper Shayna McHayle. The casting is spot-on.

It’s difficult to look at Leo DiCaprio and realize he’s a couple of weeks before he turns 51. How can that be? He’s now playing the roles that Nicholson, Beatty, Redford, DeNiro, Hackman played as they morphed into mature roles. A couple of more years and Leo will be getting AARP mail.

Bob Ferguson (Leo) is a burned-out , bomb-making, revolutionary, who’s now in hiding, while raising a 16 year-old daughter that he fathered with partner Perfidia, another revolutionary member who disappeared. All is not what it seems. Perfidia turned federal witness and left the witness protection program, in part to escape Col. Lockjaw (Penn) who she had an affair with and was her handler in the program.

Skip ahead to 16 years to Bob doing a lousy job as a single parent. He’s either drunk or high most of the time and must quickly react when Col. Lockjaw finds his daughter and is closing in on Bob and the other revolutionaries. This is where the film gets really crazy. What we’ve seen thus far is only warmup crazy.

Now, the elephant in the room. This film is about what we would refer to these days as domestic terrorism: blowing up government detention facilities and freeing immigrant detainees. Not surprising, a variety of conservative organizations and media outlets have criticized this film, in essence calling it an Antifa wet dream. Those are my words for how they are denouncing it, in this very politically-charged time.

Blaze Media writes: “As the country balances on a knife edge and radical nutcases shoot up and burn churches and assassinate conservative icons, Hollywood figured it was time to throw a Molotov cocktail into the tinderbox.” Blaze Media is a conservative media company describing itself as “news, opinion, and entertainment for people who love the American way of life.”

“One Battle After Another is pure left-wing propaganda,” the Blaze Media review continues. “The film glorifies the fantasy of bloodshed, depicting conservative America not as wrongheaded neighbors but as literal Nazis to be liquidated. The revolutionaries are cast as sexy, tragic heroes.”

The Blaze Media review is typical of the conservative criticism regarding this film and Hollywood in general. The film is very over-the-top, and that’s kind of the point.

It’s going to be tough to turn a profit from just the box office. The film started strong, but it’s slowing down. I believe it will do okay on streaming. The budget reportedly was in the range of $175 million, meaning it needs to earn almost twice that to break even.

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, Magnolia), written by Anderson and inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland. Anderson’s films are a bit over- the-top, so it fits right in. I’m not a huge fan of his work, but this is a pretty solid film – not a classic – but it’s powerful and well-made.

Would I recommend this film? Not to everyone. The politics will turn off many who will see it through the Blaze Media type of filter. I found a lot of subtle humor in the film and it makes the kind of social commentary that filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, Oliver Stone, the Coen Brothers and Ron Shelton have been successful at. We don’t have to agree with or love every film we watch, that’s not really the point of the arts. Film can certainly push our buttons, raise issues we question, color outside the lines and provoke us. We don’t have to love it to be amused by it, or learn something from it, or about ourselves.

Trailer