Parents' Guide to One Battle After Another

This darkly comic action-thriller—one of director Paul Thomas Anderson's best—has a ragged sprawl, stinging parallels to real life, and great characters with punch-drunk love in their hearts. Taking a cue from Anderson's last movie, Licorice Pizza, One Battle After Another forgoes the polished, stately look of some of the filmmaker's earlier works and embraces a ratty, worn-out feel. It's closer to the style of Anderson's mentor, Robert Altman—indeed, the movie could be a modern-day Nashville. But, unlike Licorice Pizza, this one has a shape and a center. It starts with an incendiary, scarily relevant attack on a cruel immigrant detention center, but as it goes on (in a similar fashion to Anora), it unexpectedly starts to become absurd ... and hilarious. A good deal of this is thanks to DiCaprio's superb performance. He's like "The Dude" from The Big Lebowski in 10th gear.

A sequence in which Bob tries to get helpful information from his former spy network—but he can't remember a secret code—is intense, an alternating mix of jolts and laughs. (It recalls one of Anderson's best scenes, the tense drug deal in Boogie Nights, complemented by snapping firecrackers.) And Del Toro is a perfect comic partner for DiCaprio, his wise, unhurried presence complementing DiCaprio's nervous whirlwind energy. Every performance here, from top to bottom, is rich and detailed, with Taylor another notable standout. Meanwhile, a chase scene in the third section is unlike anything you've ever seen, with cars appearing and disappearing over undulating hills to the sounds of a nervy, plunking piano. It's curious that the villains in One Battle After Another lean toward the cartoonish, but, then again, racism combined with self-righteousness can't really be portrayed any other way. This is a spellbinding ride, but there's so much going on over its 161 minutes that a second viewing may be necessary. Fortunately, it will also be a pleasure.