One wild ride for an unshakable optimist

PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON WREAKS HAVOC IN HIS NEW MOVIE 'ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER.' FOR A FILMMAKER WHO GETS HIS POODLE TO FETCH THE PAPER, THE PLAYPEN IS WIDE OPEN.

- GLENN WHIPP COLUMNIST

PAUL THOMAS Anderson, top, says he grappled with his story of American dissent, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, above, for 20 years.

PAUL THOMAS Anderson's new movie "One Battle After Another" opens in chaos.

The sun is setting and the radical California revolutionary group the French 75 is raiding an immigration detention center along the southern border in Otay Mesa while Jonny Greenwood's score is cranked to 11. We're meeting the main players - explosives expert Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio), the watchful Deandra (Regina Hall), the fierce, impulsive Perfidia (Teyana Taylor). Perfidia tells Bob to create a show and he obliges with a spectacle of fireworks and munitions.

Perfidia, meanwhile, finds the man in charge of the camp, Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), lying on a cot. "Get up," she commands, pointing her rifle at his crotch. He obliges. "Keep that d-up," she yells, taking his cap and gun and marching him out of the room.

Going into "One Battle After Another," which I first saw in July, I thought it might be Anderson's attempt to rope in a wider audience, given that it was funded by Warner Bros., cost a reported $140 million and stars box-office A-lister DiCaprio. Anderson and I have talked a lot over the years about our shared love for great movies with broad appeal like George Miller's "Mad Max" series and the road action-comedy "Midnight Run," starring Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin. Perhaps "One Battle After Another" was his "Midnight Run."

Five minutes into his movie is all it took to realize I was dead wrong.

"You really can't resist putting in weird sin your movies, can you?" I tell Anderson several weeks later at a Hollywood hotel where we finally sit down to talk about the film over a vegan lunch.

The director lets out a sustained laugh.