Review: 'One Battle After Another' mixes genres for an electrifying story of revolutionaries on the run, a perfect movie for these divided times

The most remarkable thing about writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s new movie “One Battle After Another” — and there’s a lot that’s remarkable about this movie — is that it could be labeled at different moments a political satire, a stoner farce, an action thriller, a twisted romance and a father-daughter drama, and it’s most entertaining seeing how Anderson smartly weaves them together.

The father is Bob, a pot-smoking former revolutionary played with a wry exasperation by Leonardo DiCaprio. Bob lives with his 16-year-old daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), in a small town somewhere in the American Southwest. Willa wants to hang out with her school friends, and doesn’t understand why Bob lays down strict rules — like not allowing her to have a cellphone.

What we know is what we see in the prologue, which shows Bob 16 years earlier, as part of a radical revolutionary organization called the French 75. (The name comes from both a field gun and a gin-and-champagne cocktail served at Rick’s Cafe Americain in “Casablanca.”) Anderson kicks off the movie with Bob’s group breaching an immigrant detention center, with Bob’s lover, the charismatic Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), taking the lead.

During the raid, Perfidia gets the drop on the base’s commander, Capt. Stephen Lockjaw (Sean Penn) — and what Perfidia does next gets Lockjaw so horny that it changes the trajectory of all of their lives. In short order, Lockjaw takes down the French 75 — leaving several members dead, Perfidia missing, and Bob and their new baby finding a new home under a new identity.

In the present day, Bob soon learns that Lockjaw is on his trail — and he has to kick the rust off of his old radical tactics. If only his marijuana-addled brain could remember the password to access what’s left of the old French 75’s network. Thankfully, Bob has friends, including an old radical comrade, Deandra (Regina Hall), and Willa’s karate teacher, Sergio (Benicio Del Toro).

In the credits, Anderson notes that the movie is “inspired” by “Vineland,” a novel by Thomas Pynchon — who also wrote the source of Anderson’s 2014 stoner detective movie, “Inherent Vice.” This new movie is less convoluted than that one was, which allows Anderson to focus less on the plot — which moves with the speed, power and grace of a Fornula 1 racer — and center more on Bob’s determination to protect Willa and Lockjaw’s obsession with catching Bob and locating Perfidy.

Anderson takes some fascinating detours, including two subplots that take viewers into shadowy underground systems. On one hand, Sergio maintains a maze of hallways and hiding places, and a network of skateboarding shock troops, to give sanctuary to undocumented people crossing from Mexico. On the other hand, Lockjaw is recruited to join a secret group, called the Christmas Adventurers Club, dedicated to quietly maintaining the stranglehold of rich white men on power. 

With all this going on, Anderson never allows the movie to feel overstuffed or overlong, even in its nearly three-hour running time. And as he mixes his genres — including a few he’s never really done before, like action — he keeps tight focus on Bob, who’s like a more composed version of Jeff Bridges’ The Dude from “The Big Lebowski,” as he and Lockjaw keep moving on a collision course, with Willa in the middle.

“One Battle After Another” is a masterpiece from a filmmaker who’s made his share of them, from “Boogie Nights” to “Phantom Thread,” with “There Will Be Blood” and “The Master” in between. It’s also an intensely timely movie, showing the divide that’s splitting America in half — and reminding us that there are some battles that have to be fought, and won.

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‘One Battle After Another’

★★★★

Opens Friday, September 26, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for pervasive language, violence, sexual content, and drug use. Running time: 161 minutes.