Review: Leonardo DiCaprio gives a career-defining performance in ‘One Battle After Another’
DUBAI: The revolution may not be televised, but it sure makes for compelling cinema. Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” is a sociopolitical event so in tune with the current political climate that its opening scene (set against the backdrop of an immigrant detention center) could be mistaken for the news.
The story arcs across two timelines: Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a once-radical guerrilla turned single dad and drug-addled recluse, must confront a returning threat when his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) is hunted by his old enemy Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn).
DiCaprio’s performance is revelatory. We see him on both sides of a 16-year time jump and he juggles his naïve idealism (and later disillusionment) with moments of quiet emotional weight and urgency as he morphs into a father out of his depth with practiced ease. His comic timing remains sharp as ever. A scene where he has to manically argue with a former revolutionary colleague over the phone as he begs for the coordinates to his daughter even as the latter demads old passcodes that he’s forgotten elicited huge laughs.
