In an incredible sequence about a third of the way into Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film One Battle After Another, a terrified and paranoid Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) is cowering in the living room of local karate sensei Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio Del Toro). Military special ops have descended on their small town to apprehend Bob and his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti), who have been living undercover since Willa’s infancy. Bob is right to be paranoid. But his personal fear makes him oblivious to Sensei Sergio’s “Latino Harriet Tubman situation,” as he aptly describes it: While Bob flaps around in his flannel robe, Sergio is orchestrating a mass exodus of undocumented families through secret tunnels into a sanctuary church.
This is Bob’s usual mode in relationship to the more radical action unfolding around him: a bit clueless, waiting for others to tell him what to do. He and Willa have been in hiding for 16 years because he used to be part of a far-left militant revolutionary group—the French 75—that attacked sites of military overreach. Bob, whose real name is Pat, was the group’s explosion specialist. He clearly loved the thrill of blowing things up, but he loved the group’s spirited provocateur, Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), even more. When he and Perfidia have a baby, he’s ready to put down some roots; she’s not. Eventually both their fragile union and the group’s explode like one of his homemade bombs, leaving indiscriminate destruction in its wake. Since going into hiding as a single dad, he has grown both more clueless and more paranoid, surrounded by a perpetual haze of marijuana smoke.
Perhaps because he was never very good at paying attention, perhaps because his commitment to the political cause was always a bit vague, Bob is unaware of his real enemy, Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn). Lockjaw is Bob’s exact opposite, a law-and-order fanatic whose ramrod vertebrae and precision buzz cut are the reverse image to Bob’s perpetual slouch and unwashed man-bun. In their younger days, however, he shared Bob’s fascination with Perfidia and obsessively hunted the French 75 so he could be near her, even while he was baffled and ashamed by his attraction to a radical Black woman who unmanned him in every way. Those conflicted entanglements come back to haunt them all when Lockjaw seeks membership in a secretive White supremacist organization that styles itself as protectors of western civilization. It turns out Bob isn’t paranoid enough.
