Yesterday I finally saw “One Battle After Another” – because I suspect it’s going to win the Oscar and I wanted to be au courant – and I’m still a little traumatized by Sean Penn’s haircut. But that was one of the least preposterous things in the movie. I thought, because of all the buzz, I was going to get a serious movie, one perhaps with an important message, and the first 10 minutes gave me that impression. But it quickly descended into an implausible entertainment. Maybe because I write nonfiction, I like stories that have a basis in reality. More and more, it seems, screenwriters sit in their writers’ rooms and come up with narratives, characters, dialogues, scenes simply because they are cool or outrageous; the fact that they have no relation to the real world, logical behavior, means nothing to them. As long as it will make for great viewing. (I suspect we have Tarantino to thank for this.) “One Battle After Another” is often gripping, and occasionally funny – an action-packed movie of the type that appeals to adolescents – but it is not in the least bit plausible. I mean, why would a man who’s on the run continue to wear a plaid bathrobe?
