Clearly there was a part of me that wanted it to rise, to jump into the upper half of my top ten so my feelings would be consistent with those of the rest of the critical community, to say nothing of the audience community. After all, I did watch it for the first time on the same day I returned from Europe, which could have muted my appreciation of the film for all sorts of different reasons.
Well, I held off on revealing this for exactly one day.
And I'm writing about it because I do want to air some of the nitpicks that prevent me from embracing it quite as warmly as some other people do. (I do embrace it, just not as much as they do.)
Let's start with Leonardo DiCaprio's Bob Ferguson, a.k.a. Ghetto Pat, a.k.a. Rocketman.
The thing people seem to relish most about the character -- and I would argue the movie, at least from a comedic perspective -- is his ongoing tete-a-tete with Comrade Joshua, who refuses, over the course of two different phone calls, to give Bob the rendezvous point because Bob can't answer the question "What time is it?"
Bob's anger over Joshua's apparent pettiness is funny, though Joshua is only doing what he's been told to do, based on prudent precautions, especially at a time when their whole network is threatened. That's not what bothers me. It's Bob's attitude toward these safeguards that is problematic, given his own recent behavior toward his daughter, Willa.
Bob was the one exercising possibly superfluous caution, when his daughter left for the dance, what, an hour earlier? Even though this was just an ordinary Tuesday at their house -- okay probably a Friday, since they don't usually hold school dances on Tuesdays -- Bob had to give her his whole song and dance about taking the trust device with her. You know, the thing his fellow revolutionary programmed to play a tune when in range of another such trust device.
Obviously this bit is just for our benefit in the audience, but it does play awkwardly within the reality of these characters' world. For one, it's been 16 years since Bob fled with baby Willa, and they have no reason to think, on this particularly Tuesday, their years of quiet and successful hiding was about to be overturned. He wouldn't need to specifically tell her to bring the trust device; bringing it or not bringing it would just be part of their standard routine. They wouldn't be discussing it this night, one way or another.
Given that Bob does, however, make a big deal out of it, it's hard to then yield him the moral high ground an hour later when he takes the same eyeball-rolling perspective toward Comrade Joshua that his daughter is taking toward him. We meet Bob as a defender of these methods of identifying simpatico souls, so it's hard to fully be on his side when he repeatedly tears Joshua a new one for requiring the same standard of caution. (Or for us to be on the same side as the other comrade, who ultimately gets Bob approved, but who then makes Joshua apologize, genuinely and profusely, just for doing his job.)
Bob specfiically talks about how he doesn't remember the "code speak," but didn't he tirelessly teach his daughter the same code speak? When she's confronted in the high school bathroom by Deandra -- that trust device sure came in handy quickly -- she repeats back the necessary phrases without any difficulty. She could only do this, of course, if Bob had taught them to her. Not only taught them, but repeatedly drilled them in, so she would never forget them. Which she did not. (Incidentally, you'd think having the trust device would probably be enough, but I guess Deandra wanted an additional level of proof -- even if this 16-year-old standing in front of her could not possibly be working for Steve Lockjaw, and looks exactly like Deandra would expect her to look.)
I think I might be even more troubled by the callback to this code speak in the finale. I probably don't need to issue a SPOILER ALERT but let's just get it out of the way just to be sure.
So after Willa has dispatched the Christmas Adventurer, who could not respond properly to her listing of the names of the three TV shows, she applies the same standard on Bob as he timidly creeps into range of her weapon. I believe the first time she calls out the names of the shows, she hasn't yet clearly seen him. She's obviously amped up and on high alert after just killing a man.
But the second time she asks for the names of the shows and wants Bob's response, she's already heard his voice, already seen the unmistakeable shambling shape of his bathrobe, and yet she's still not certain this isn't just some exceptional Bob impersonator. I think we are meant to believe she's shell-shocked, but Anderson is trying to create a legitimate worry in the audience that she might shoot Bob, to increase the tension of the moment. I just don't buy it. She's been so eager for a final delivery from this nightmare scenario that it just reads as false that she would be genuinely questioning Bob's identity.
And while we're on the topic of contrivances, I've got a few more:
1) After all is said and done, they just return to living in the same house again? Yes they believe Steve Lockjaw is dead -- he is, but not in the way they think -- but that only means the end of his own pursuit of the pair. Aren't they still wanted for domestic terrorism? Aren't there others who would still be coming after them -- especially at their last known address?
2) The only reason Willa even gets to the end of the movie alive is because the Native American tracker hired by Lockjaw has second thoughts and decides not to leave her in the clutches of the murderous mercenaries, who will kill her without blinking. We are meant to believe that this man does things for pragmatic reasons only. We know he has enough of a code of honor not to kill children, but we also know he knows he's actually playing a role in Willa's imminent death by delivering her to the murderous mercenaries. What did he see about them that would have caused him to change his mind? Did one of the guys have too many tattoos for his liking? So this man, who exists pragmatically and consorts with dirty characters like Steve Lockjaw, decides to his endanger his own life to free Willa, and indeed, does pay for it with his life. I'm tempted to say the only reason he does this is that he's a Native American and the film is squeamish about portraying him negatively, but I think there would have been a cleaner and more plausible way to write this.
3) The only reason Bob even gets to end of the movie alive is because of the extremely poor chain of custody once he's arrested in Baktan Cross. You can almost see Anderson waving his hand through this sequence of events, where two hospital workers conspire to get him out of his handcuffs and down a fire escape. Given that Bob is specifically listed as a target by Lockjaw when he lays out the mission parameters to his team -- a target they planned to "bag and tag," no less -- it seems incomprehensible that there would not have been someone, even Lockjaw himself, overseeing this man in a bathrobe taken into custody after falling off a roof. The arresting officer would not mention this suspicious bit of behavior, especially by a guy who was clearly not an illegal immigrant? How could Lockjaw's team, always portrayed as ruthlessly efficient, botch this one so badly?
My feelings about One Battle After Another did not go up after a second viewing, but they did not go down either. The movie is sitting in the exact spot in my rankings where it sat before I watched it a second time, which you will see, in a few weeks, is quite high.
But I don't think these are just nitpicks. They are, in some cases, genuine plot holes. I didn't even mention the contrived nature of Lockjaw's villain ranting as he hands Willa over to the tracker. If he truly wanted the tracker to believe that she was a "bad hombre" who wouldn't be missed, someone guilty of genuine if unspecified crimes against the U.S.A., why would he indulge in a final rant about how if things had gone differently they could have gotten to know each other? You would not talk about the missed opportunity of getting to know a drug dealer. Who knows how much this contributed to the tracker's ultimate decision to free Willa.
Films heaped with the kind of praise that One Battle After Another has gotten should not have as many questions like this as One Battle After Another has. People are saying it's perfect, when clearly it is not.
So now I have a link I can send to anybody, any time they wonder why I ranked the movie "only" in the spot where I'll end up ranking it.
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