If you ever watched the likes of Boogie Nights, Magnolia or There Will Be Blood (pick your Paul Thomas Anderson masterpiece), and wondered: "What could this guy do with a blockbuster budget?", One Battle After Another is the supremely satisfying answer to that very question. On the pulse and thrillingly propulsive, One Battle is ambitious and rewarding in a way that most contemporary tentpoles can only dream.
Reported to have cost upwards of $150m (for reference, that's two Morbiuses), every cent of that comic-book-movie budget is on screen. Loosely based on the Thomas Pynchon novel Vineland, One Battle is the decades-spanning story of a modern American revolutionary front and their often-violent conflict with US Army Captain Steven J. Lockjaw (an unhinged Sean Penn). Starring Leonardo DiCaprio as 'rocket man' Bob Ferguson, the sprawling story eventually settles its focus on the 'Sanctuary City' of Batkan Cross, where Bob and his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) are pursued by Lockjaw, as riots erupt on the streets.
