Radical violence. Immigration raids. White supremacists. Leonardo DiCaprio’s politically charged new film “One Battle After Another” might scarcely be extra well timed.
Part-action, part-drama, with loads of comedy and virtually assured a bagful of Oscar nominations, the movie facilities on an ageing revolutionary and his teenage daughter.
It delivers a lesson on “what this next generation is going to have to deal with,” DiCaprio instructed a press convention.
DiCaprio performs Bob, a political rebel who makes a speciality of explosives. The film begins as he conducts undercover resistance operations on the U.S.-Mexico border together with his lover and co-conspirator, Perfidia (Teyana Taylor).
But when villainous Sean Penn’s Colonel Lockjaw infiltrates the group, Bob is pressured to flee with their toddler Willa.
Sixteen years later, the majority of the story finds Bob’s outlaw historical past catching up with him and his now-adolescent daughter.
Lockjaw is in sizzling pursuit, completely happy to order arbitrary immigration crackdowns on the neighborhood the place he believes his goal is hiding.
The drawback is, Bob has spent that point frying his mind with medication and alcohol — and may’t bear in mind the very first thing about being a revolutionary.
“I love the idea that you expect this character’s going to use massive espionage skills, but he cannot remember the password,” mentioned DiCaprio. “His past is coming back to haunt him, and now it’s passed on to the next generation, a sort of trauma.”
The movie, out September 26 within the United States, comes from writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, the auteur behind “There Will Be Blood,” “Magnolia,” “Boogie Nights” and “Licorice Pizza.”
Reviews are underneath embargo, however fast response from critics on social media has been effusive in reward. It is already seen as a transparent frontrunner for finest image on the Academy Awards.
Penn’s character is embroiled with a bunch of white supremacists known as the Christmas Adventurers — a setup that gives comedy in addition to darkness.
“Well, they became less ludicrous even since we’ve shot the film. I see the culture adapting to take it all straight,” Penn earlier instructed the New York Times.
DiCaprio instructed the identical newspaper that the film “is politically charged, but I think it has a lot to do with how tribal we’ve all become.”
The movie dissects “how we have stopped listening to one another, and how these characters thinking or acting in these extremes can bring a lot of hurt,” mentioned the actor.
The Times interview was carried out a number of weeks earlier than the deadly taking pictures of right-wing U.S. activist Charlie Kirk.
“I hope that this movie really creates a lot of healthy dialog and a lot of necessary conversations that need to be had,” Taylor instructed a press convention.
By his personal admission, Anderson “stole” the idea of “what happens when revolutionaries scatter” from the Thomas Pynchon novel “Vineland.”
Anderson beforehand tailored Pynchon’s “Inherent Vice” for the display screen. But this time the inspiration is way looser.
“Rather than be respectful of the book like I did with ‘Inherent Vice,’ I just kind of took what I needed… and just started running with it,” Anderson instructed a Los Angeles particular screening attended by AFP.
DiCaprio, taking part in an atypically shabby and matted, paranoid hero, drew inspiration from “The Big Lebowski,” in addition to Al Pacino’s character in “Dog Day Afternoon.”
“The humanity of the character, in a strange way — an incredibly flawed protagonist” appealed to DiCaprio. “It was a blast to make the movie.”
© 2025 AFP