Movie Review: One Battle After Another

The new movie "One Battle After Another" has one aspect of movie-making taken from Christopher Nolan, the almost non-stop background music throughout the entire film. Why would any movie director desire non-stop background music? For me, the annoying music distracts too much from the story. Perhaps the director Paul Thomas Anderson's mentor is director Christopher Nolan, who had background music playing througout last year's Oppenheimer. I will never be a fan of background music during any movie.

One Battle After Another is about a group of militant criminals who rob banks to fund their cause called "The French 75," which is a revolutionary group that resists government surveillance and corporate corruption. From the beginning of this story, you realize it is going to be one of those "desperate to be different" movies, when you find out that one of the main characters, played by Sean Penn, is named "Col. Steve J. Lockjaw", easily one of the craziest character names in the history of movies.

Everything about this movie tries to be new and different and, in too many scenes, insane. This movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Bob, one of the leaders of French 75. He is married to Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), who is the character most involved with the bank robberies that fund the group. In one scene, extremely pregnant with her stomach exposed, Perfidia fires off many rounds of a machine gun in an open field - yet another crazy moment in this film.

When Perfidia is captured, the insane Colonel Lockjaw falls in love with her and allows her to escape into witness protection. Perfidia eventually flees to Mexico, and her character is never seen again in this story. We find out later that Bob's daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), is Lockjaw's daughter, setting the stage for her kidnapping by Colonel Lockjaw later in the film.

The conclusion is equally as crazy as the rest of this movie, with a highly unusual car chase scene on a remote highway.

The acting is very good throughout this film; however, the too high 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes I do not agree with, with my rating 85% and a recommendation. I agree mostly with the review of Christopher Lloyd (The Film Yap) that summarizes this movie better than any other review: "An overly long, messy, tonally weird piece that inartfully stitches together disparate elements. Some great performances, including Sean Penn, but he's a cartoon villain. The women -- Chase Infiniti, Teyana Taylor and Regina Hall -- really drive it."

The bottom line is, for any movie, just because it is a new idea and has never been seen before does not automatically make it good or enjoyable to the audience.