Very loosely based on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s (Licorice Pizza, The Master) latest film is a seriously entertaining action dramedy perfectly timed to our current political chaos. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Pat Calhoun, a pot-smoking bomb maker with the French 75, a group of revolutionaries taking on the government and, as we meet them, liberating an immigration detention camp somewhere in California. Pat’s girlfriend is the very take-no-prisoners Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), who during the operation has an intense sexual interaction with Commanding Officer Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), beginning his long obsession with her.
As French 75 continue their attacks on the powerful, Lockjaw escalates his search for Perfidia, finally catching her in the act of planting a bomb, but setting her free after she agrees to meet him for a tryst. The attacks continue even when Perfidia is heavily pregnant. But once the baby is born, Pat tries to get her to cut back on the revolutionary actions and settle down with her family. But forget that! And she gets caught again, only this time Lockjaw offers her just one out – rat out her buddies and go into witness protection, which she does. And Lockjaw hunts down and kills most of her fellow revolutionaries. Pat takes the baby Willa and disappears, as Perfidia escapes Lockjaw’s protection and heads to Mexico.
But 16 years later, Lockjaw is still on their trail. Pat (now known as Bob) has done everything he can to stay off the grid and raise Willa as just another ordinary girl in small town Baktan Cross. But Lockjaw has set his sites on becoming a member of the Christmas Adventurers Club, a secretive group of powerful right-wing White Supremacists, and he needs to cover up his interracial relationship with Perfidia, especially if Willa could be his daughter. So he hires a bounty hunter to track Pat/Bob and Willa down.
And under the guise of an immigration and drug operation he arrives in Baktan Cross with an enormous battle force. And from that point on, the film becomes an intense cat and mouse game with Lockjaw, Willa, and Pat/Bob, with the aid of Willa’s karate teacher/community leader Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro). French 75 it turns out is also not totally dead or disbanded and lends a hand at key moments.
The film is very funny at times and the action sequences are pretty amazingly tense. DiCaprio is the bigger star, but Penn turns in the film’s most brilliant performance. DiCaprio is pretty fun to watch too though as the bumbling dad who’s escaped the house in a hurry, dressed in his robe (very The Dude), trying and failing to remember his revolutionary training, but mostly doing everything in his power to save his daughter.
Is there a political message here? You bet ya! Unlike the current right-wing myth of Antifa’s vast secretive organization taking down the government, the left-wing revolutionaries in the film are not hiding. They’re out in the streets fighting for immigrants, and equality, and the power of the people. Of course, the film was in the works long before the current administration came in with their right-wing wrecking ball. But damn if there aren’t scenes from a Kristi Noem ICE raid right there on the screen! The book it is based on set the action in the 60s and 80s, but Anderson who has been working on the film for 20 years has made it as relevant and timely as can be.
It runs two hours and forty-one minutes, but never feels long. You really can’t look away for an instant. And I highly recommend it.
In theaters now.