One of the first names to come across Paul Thomas Anderson’s desk as he was casting his 1997 film, Boogie Nights, was a young faced Leonardo DiCaprio who turned down starring in the film to be in James Cameron’s Titanic. Though people will always wonder what that collaboration must have looked like, nearly thirty years later, the two finally come together in one of PT Anderson’s more audacious works to date; something new, and something accessible - One Battle After Another - a neo-western action thriller blockbuster. Though this is new territory for him, Anderson pulls everything off near effortlessly as this titan of a movie makes contemplations through a wild and tense story that never lets you breathe until the very last moments. 

 

Through thirty years of making films, Anderson claims he’s been trying to bring this to the big screen for the past twenty. Originally planned as an adaption of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland then reportedly morphing over time while also keeping the skeleton of that book’s story of an ex-revolutionary attempting to rescue his daughter from a US Military Officer. Eventually Anderson was able to make a completely original script, while also paying respect to the stories he was borrowing from that author. Not only that, this is the first film since 2002’s Punch-Drunk Love he’s made that takes place in the present day. With all the building blocks Anderson had set out for him, he makes this quite possibly one of his more personal films as well. Not only is he able to reflect on a nearly thirty year career in filmmaking, he’s also able to reflect on his own family life, while also looking forward to both of them with nothing but optimism in his eyes. 

 

This is the third feature Anderson has shot on his own, this time filming in vistavision for him to take more advantage of his frame, and let me tell you, the photography in this thing is dazzling. You have scenes in wide open desert landscapes that feel so open but vulnerable, there’s the green foliage of northern California, and the lively night life that brings some of the best night photography I’ve seen all year. Not to mention the propulsion of this thing. At just over two and a half hours, this baby never wastes your time as an audience member, while also throwing entertaining scene after entertaining scene right at you. All helped by the jazzy and kinetic score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood who Anderson has collaborated with as composer since There Will Be Blood. 

 

Now how can one talk about a PT Anderson movie without its performances? You of course have DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson, who has fried his brain looking after his daughter Willa, played by Chase Infiniti after their mother had left just sixteen years ago. Bob is an ex-revolutionary from the group The French 75 where he and his girlfriend Perfidia Beverly Hills went around with other revolutionaries of the group and performed radical acts of domestic terrorism as a militia. Sixteen years later, Captain Steve Lockjaw catches a whiff of Bob and Willa, and aims to go after them. Though all the performances here are pretty solid, the three up and center in the film are some of the best performances you’re going to find all year. You have Leo’s cooked and unhinged demeanor as well as Penn’s villainous yet hilarious turn as the villain. And still the top performance is newcomer Chase Infiniti, who is the film’s heart and soul. It is irradiating and bursting with joy, but also a fierce cutting edge I haven’t seen in a single performance in quite some time. 

 

One Battle After Another is Paul Thomas Anderson’s biggest film yet, but it may also be his most soulful. We follow characters who hope for nothing than a better tomorrow and will fight tooth and nail to make tomorrow happen. He wants us to have fun here, but he also wants to keep that fighting spark alive within all of us. Stepping into new territory he’s also able to make the film as dazzling as he can, and he just makes the thing just look so effortless. The film is a neo-western that’s urgent, vital, tense, hilarious, soulful, but also fierce. This is bound to go down as possibly the most essential picture of the year.