One Battle After Another

An aging former revolutionary must try to save his daughter from a racist colonel, in a satiric action film about the current American predicament. We’re living in a time when the news is stranger than fiction. What should filmmakers do in such times? Paul Thomas Anderson, one of our best film directors, has chosen to face this moment by combining the action film with satire. The result is his latest movie, One Battle After Another. In a sort of alternate version of recent history, a revolutionary group called “The French 75” breaks into an immigrant detention camp, freeing all the…