Set on the Texas-Mexico border, Leo and Teyana Taylor star as revolutionaries Bob and Perfidia Beverly Hills, who raid sites holding illegal immigrants in cages, rob banks to fund their cause and bomb government buildings. Flash forward 16 years, and single father Bob is raising their daughter Willa when former comrades get in contact and a whirlwind begins with Leo running around in a dressing gown with a rifle, desperately trying to charge his phone. I don’t want to get into too much plot detail at risk of spoilers, but what I will say is that One Battle After Another sits somewhere between a straight Coen Brothers neo-Western like No Country For Old Men and a cartoonish one like O Brother Where Art Thou? This is a black comedy with guns, and there are plenty of nuances to observe in the colourful characters’ contradictions. The middle-aged revolutionary Bob, for example, has become something of an alcoholic ‘conservative’ dad, worried about his daughter going out with teenage boys, while he watches war movies and struggles with the modern bureaucracy of his old militant group.
Meanwhile, Sean Penn steals the show in an Oscar-worthy performance as Colonel Steven J Lockjaw, a gristly white supremacist with bulging biceps, on the hunt for the activists. Accompanied by a fast-paced, scatty score from Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, with gorgeous VistaVision visuals, One Battle After Another is a solid, but not hugely accessible, outing from Anderson. It’s not the director’s greatest effort, but this almost 3 hour flick is certainly worth a look for dedicated cinephiles.
One Battle After Another is released in UK cinemas on September 26.