Leonardo DiCaprio has a date with a 16-year-old when his teenage daughter (Chase Infiniti) is kidnapped by a corrupt military officer (Sean Penn).

Paul Thomas Anderson updates Thomas Pynchon’s post-Nixon novel Vineland into a Trump-era treatise on American fascism, whose anti-immigration backdrop is particularly potent in the current ICE age. He masterfully combines the kidnapping thriller with political satire and stoner comedy, all while maintaining a level of intensity for two hours and 40 minutes that Avatar: Fire and Ash failed to muster in even its most bladder-straining moments.

Anderson’s direction is mercurial and bracing as the movie moves from funny to frightening and back again in the space of a single scene. The compelling, combustible plot is absurd without being wacky, so you believe in the batshit events and bonkers yet vulnerable characters, keeping you invested, stressed out and genuinely unsure of what is going to happen next.

A dressing gown-clad DiCaprio leans enjoyably into his druggy antihero era, even if his performance mostly consists of yelling, while Penn delivers a deranged, robotic turn as the neckless menace hellbent on harshing Leo’s mellow. The cultish absurdity of military goons and white supremacy is skewered with Kubrickian black comedy, but the film also sends up the leftist revolutionaries’ impractical use of code and easily triggered sensibilities. Michael Bauman captures the action in the largely disused VistaVision format, producing some extreme contrast to match the overall irreverence, all underscored by Jonny Greenwood’s sweeping, eclectic music.

Unique, unpredictable and entertaining as hell, One Battle After Another even prompted a jealous tirade from Quentin Tarantino, whose career has thus far resisted comparisons to Stanley Kubrick, unless you make the case that they both ceased their creative output in the 1990s.