As apt as it feels to see a movie now about gestapolike forces patrolling the border, chasing down immigrants and dragging them to detention centers, “One Battle After Another,” the new Paul Thomas Anderson project, is based on the 1990 novel “Vineland” by Thomas Pynchon.
Anderson, best known for witty cynicisms poking at the grandiloquence of America – see “Magnolia” (1999) and “There will be Blood” (2007) – has wrapped his hands around the hard-to-grasp Pynchon before with “Inherent Vice” (2014). Here he proves to have a stronger grip, much of that coming in the reflection of current immigration policies and the political and racial divides that confront the country.
The deftly architected script begins in the 1980s with the French 75, a radical social justice terrorist group akin to the Weather Underground or Black Panthers who act under an “any means possible” mantra to spring detainees from detention camps by employing crafty military tactics – being well armed and brazen doesn’t hurt either. In our inaugural incursion led by Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor, “Straw”), the 75 sweep into a border encampment, free the detainees and flip the playbook on the guards by putting them in pens, including Sean Penn’s commanding officer character, colonel Lockjaw.
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