Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” his 10th film, has released a new trailer, and it’s a wild one. The best of the bunch, so far.
A particular moment has Benicio Del Toro, mid-car-chase, turning to Leonardo DiCaprio and saying, “Freedom is no fear, just like Tom Cruise,” just before DiCaprio launches himself out of a moving car.
The trailer promises a politically-charged action movie. Based on another Thomas Pynchon text, this is Anderson’s second adaptation of the reclusive author’s work, following “Inherent Vice.” That 2014 film was also his last to appear on the fall festival circuit; “Phantom Thread” and “Licorice Pizza” skipped fests entirely.
Anderson appears to be keeping that tradition alive: I reported during the weekend that “One Battle After Another” would not be hitting the fall fests this year. With a September 26 release date, we’re looking at Warner Bros playing it safe by not exposing the film to audiences and instead opting to quietly screen it for press two weeks before release.
The film stars DiCaprio, his first time working with PTA, as ex-revolutionary Bob Ferguson, now living in seclusion under the name “Ghetto Pat.” His daughter, played by Chase Infiniti, is pulled into the reemerging far-left radical group. Also in the cast: Del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, and Sean Penn, who plays the group’s old nemesis, Col. Steven J. Lockjaw, a white supremacist military man.
Shot on 35mm VistaVision, across California, the film boasts another original score by Johnny Greenwood. Aesthetically, it looks like vintage Anderson: washed-out skies, cracked desert roads, shadowy interiors soaked in paranoia.
Check out the trailer below.