![A battle after another, an action comedy virtuoso and euphoric [critique]](https://gruntstuff.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/A-battle-after-another-an-action-comedy-virtuoso-and-euphoric.jpeg)
A battle after another, an action comedy virtuoso and euphoric [critique]
The meeting at the top between Paul Thomas Anderson and Leonardo DiCaprio leads to an adrenaline and large American cinema.
“What time is it? “requests the interlocutor-mysteria on the phone. Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) cannot answer, he has a hole: he knows that he must give a password, learned by heart in the Revolutionary manualbut it’s been a while since he had opened this book. It must also be said that it has the brain grilled by drugs and alcohol, high -dose ingested for years. Without a password, impossible to join the hideout where his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) found refuge, impossible to help her escape the claws of Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), a racist and bloodthirsty colonel. Bob will then take a helping hand by Willa Karate teacher, Sensei Sergio (Benicio Del Toro), to find his action man reflexes. Because, sixteen years earlier, Bob was an exceptional fighter, an expert in explosives leading war to the authorities within the group of French 75…
“What time is it? “ is also a question that can be asked before One battle after anotherthe new Paul Thomas Anderson. Or rather: at what time are we exactly? The film is distantly inspired by a book by Thomas Pynchon, Vinelandwhich told the mouth of wood of radical activists from the sixties in full return of conservative stick, under Reagan, in the 80s. But PTA had the brilliant idea of transposing this intrigue into contemporary America. A way for him to escape nostalgia baba and the post-hippie decorum that he explored more than his turn, with Boogie Nights, Inherent Vice et Licorice Pizza.
A way also to say that the Trumpian lead screed that is currently falling on the United States is the culmination of a long-standing counter-revolution, in response to sixty-eight activism. But PTA flees like the plague the history-geo lessons and the political prechi-prison: he uses this scrambling of landmarks to invent a poetic vision of US history, a temporal short circuit mixing references of yesterday and today, The Battle of Algiers And Black Lives Matter, Prophet Soul Gil Scott-Heron and rapper Junglepussy, leading to a fabulous uchronic farce.
Do not fear that this politico-pynchonian decoction is one of these impenetrable puzzles of which PTA can have the secret. One battle after anotherbasically, it is the anti-Inherent Vice. Despite the DiCaprio Big Lebowski loyalty, this is not a smoky and unbearable film-labyrinth. The intrigue goes straight and forbids the detours: it is a question of saving a young girl from the hands of the enemy, as in an inverted version of The prisoner of the desertwith white supremacists in the role of Indians. After a first act where PTA Mixed, with breathtaking fluidity and musicality, quantity of characters, places, information, the film begins to go for its arrival point, climbing its rhythm-cardboard on that of the character of DiCaprio (once again great), unfanished boomer but ultimately too happy to resume arms.
“What crazy movie”: Spielberg cheers up a battle after anotherOne battle after another Perhaps you immerse your head the first in the contemporary American political slump (starting with the exploration of the most sick fringes of his ancestral racism), he does it with the generosity of a great show on Saturday evening, full of gags, suspense, emotion, races of guns in hand and foot to the floor. PTA has sometimes been able to give the image of an esthete locked in the trap of its own virtuosity. This will not be the case with this insane energy film, which leaves its spectator a big smile on the lips, the heart that knocks hard and the eyes exorbity.
One battle after another (One Battle After Another), by Paul Thomas Anderson, with Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Chase Infiniti… in the cinema on September 24.
![Angoulême 2025: The triumph of children are well, mugana and promised the sky [palmarès]](https://gruntstuff.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Angouleme-2025-The-triumph-of-children-are-well-mugana-and-768x402.jpg)