One Battle After Another

Cert - 15

Run-time - 2 hours 42 minutes

Director - Paul Thomas Anderson

When their location is revealed, a former revolutionary (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his teenage daughter (Chase Infiniti) are separated and caught between fleeing and chasing.

4D can't quite create the feeling of your stomach leaping and falling like on a rollercoaster. But, as the camera almost scrapes the rise and fall of the almost empty road it races along, Paul Thomas Anderson can. Occasionally cutting to the rear-view mirror or long shots of the desert terrain there's a growing tension to the chase at hand, alongside the internal thrills Anderson conjures.

It's a feeling brought to a number of the action-based sequences in the writer-director's latest, much of which is centred around running and chasing. Former revolutionary Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) is caught between the pair when, after 16 years hiding, his location is revealed and he must find his teenage daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) before escaping.

Dicaprio, alongside Jonny Greenwood's excellent score of rumbling, fluid tension, effectively captures the rushing fear and panic of Bob's stoned mind as he's thrown into a situation he's prepared for but appears to have half-relaxed into thinking would never arrive. The perpetual motion of the film - constantly rolling along like cogs on a treadmill - reminded me of Mad Max: Fury Road with the threat constantly hot on Bob and Willa's tails.

The threat at hand is Sean Penn's scowling Colonel Steven Lockjaw. Penn brings a darkness with an easily-brought-out fear-inducing anger to the chases, in addition to being a familiar face to Bob's partner Perfidia (Teyana Taylor) - leading much of what we see in the early revolutionary action of the film.

As a chase and action movie Anderson, alongside editor Andy Jurgensen, has created something very effective - however, the early events provide not just context and wider narrative but the lens through which the following sequences are viewed, especially as Bob and Perfidia diverge once they become parents, adding to the eventual frenzied chaos. Whether such scenes or more directly dramatic sequences all is brilliantly captured by cinematographer Michael Bauman.

In-between instances where we see hiding, chasing and fleeing take on different guises and meanings the breathers can feel more like slight slow-downs, even if the pace is picked back up straight away, and the near three-hour run-time not felt at all. However, in a film that successfully covers different perspectives and figures in the multiple cat-and-mouse chases which eventually converge with highly successful suspense without feeling overstuffed this feels like a small point

Part way through I sat amazed that Warner Bros would stump up at least an estimated $130 million for this, but the final rather un-studio product, they certainly seem to have had difficulty marketing it, is very much worth it. With the elements coming together for a tense, thrilling set of frantic yet well-connected chases.

Four stars