Battleship Pumpkin: A Messy Hotchpotch Of Forking Paths

You go into the cinema hall with too many thoughts swirling in your head from too many reviews, too many interviews, too much word of mouth. Paul Thomas Anderson has made this gritty, hard-hitting political movie—a tight slap against the growing right-wing, fascist leaders and governments across the world. His kick-ass black female characters, well, kick ass of the patriarchal, male-dominated, racist world. Sean Penn has delivered the role of his lifetime as a deranged, white supremacist army general, which is certain to land him the Oscar for supporting role. If only there were two Oscars for the supporting role next year, Benicio del Toro, as the conscience keeper and moral compass of the film, should get the other. Chase Infiniti is the most exciting newcomer in a long time, a natural who will make Hollywood her home. Leonardo DiCaprio has taken on a gutsy lead role playing a drug-addled, alcoholic loser while everyone around him is a rebellious warrior. The car chase sequence towards the end of the film in the desert is the most breathtaking feat in filmmaking. One Battle After Another is the film of the century.

About halfway into the film you keep waiting for the political message to hit you hard. But what you get is incoherent blotches of this and that on the screen. Yes, a few characters rant about fascists, capitalists, supremacists, mostly in pumped-up screams full of swear words. Yes, the female lead Perfidy Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) is a kick-ass (in fact, the film ruminates a lot on Taylor’s derriere, right from the first shot when the camera follows her from behind as she is perusing her next site for an attack), black revolutionary, but soon there is this mawkish arc of her sleeping with the enemy. She is the prime mover of the revolutionary group which goes by the name of French 75, of which Bob Ferguson (DiCaprio) is the main bomber. They are a couple, and then she has a torrid affair with their arch-enemy who has an eye for her (or more specifically for her body part mentioned above). Broadly speaking, the film’s heart is right—the blacks, the immigrants, and ‘working class white females’ are the good souls and white, blond men with blue eyes the bad eggs. But who exactly are the revolutionaries liberating, and from whom?  Black people from the White? Slavish employees from greedy corporate bosses? Women from men?

Yes, Sean Penn as Col. Steven J. Lockjaw is the deranged, white supremacist but he plays it in a hammy, cartoonish manner, with some strange ticks which pass off for acting chops; not as a cold, calculating monster in suit and tie or army fatigues. He doesn’t send a chill down your spine, merely a chuckle. Del Toro has about three scenes in the film, out of which two are in Spanish. He is a sort of an Oskar Schindler for illegal Mexican immigrants—he could have done this role in his night pajamas, and which he mostly does. Chase Infiniti is arresting enough, but with those karate lessons she is introduced in the film with, you would hope there will be at least a mini ‘The Bride’ sequence somewhere later. Sadly, for most of her screen time, her hands are tied, quite literally. Aneet Padda in Saiyaara, Vedica Pinto in Nishaanchi and Sahher Bambba in Ba***ds of Bollywood are far more interesting newcomers. Many reading this may not have heard these names, look them up.

Now, to get to our hero, you are not watching DiCaprio in this film, but constantly wondering where have you seen him perform all these scenes before. Is the messy, unkempt hair, with specks of blood on his face from The Revenant (2015)? Is that bulked-up, washed out body with tightly shut lips and those cowardly furrows on the forehead sequences from Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)? That helpless look in front of a young girl, making an ass of himself chain smoking and chain drinking, not able to work the simple gadgets from Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)? But he does give three laugh-out-loud moments in the film—in 2 hours 48 minutes. He has lines like: “Freedom is a funny thing, isn’t it? When you have it, you don’t appreciate it, and when you miss it, it’s gone." When you hear it, it sounds profound, when you think about it, it’s utterly banal.

To cut to the chase now, you wait for it to churn your stomach and hold on to the edge of the seat as the story shifts to Borrego Springs deserts. The setting is great, though our Ladakh can beat it, and when it starts, it’s not even a proper chase, more like one car tailing another on undulating roads. For a real nail-biting, stomach-churning chase sequence, with no music but only ambient sound and a few grunts by Gene Hackman, where there are not even two cars, go to the 8-minute clip on YouTube of The French Connection (1971).