Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson has honed a singular cottage filmmaking industry lending a sympathetic gaze to insular groups such as the denizens of the Hollywood hills, religious cultists, oil tycoons and fashion house provocateurs. Now he leverages the lives of an interlocking series of domestic terrorists to make points about humanity and society, with mixed and sometimes muddled results. His One Battle After Another (B-) explores the notion of passing along to a next generation an uncanny revolutionary spirit via the explosive relationship of American vigilantes played by Teyana Taylor and Leonardo DiCaprio and their teenage offspring played by newcomer Chase Infiniti. In modern times, DiCaprio’s character is regularly killing a few brain cells, but he’s also a protective father living off the grid who gets pulled into a propulsive powder-keg when a villain from the past (a white supremacist military man played by Sean Penn) threatens his beloved daughter. Anderson’s kinetic visual style is well-suited to a series of action set pieces traversing cramped immigrant camps and hideaways, the wide desert canvas of hilly highways and the parkour of it all with escapes atop and across city rooftops. The movie’s story and script are lacking, and the characterizations lose focus amidst the progressive acts of chaos. The film’s long running time, seemingly enough space to adequately explore its characters, strangely sidelines and shortchanges members of its otherwise fascinating family. Penn actually gets the showiest part, but even the choices he makes in portraying this quirky character don’t always make complete sense. The film is frisky and funniest when featuring  DiCaprio’s misanthropic humor as his character forgets passwords and chides those easily triggered. Despite some grace notes in the final act, Anderson doesn’t fully sell his thesis, and his hot takes aren’t even pointed enough to provide direct allegory for contemporary times. This loose adaptation of the novel Vineland is either an overlong lark or a short shrift to characters needing more developing. It’s sometimes PTA’s perpetual prattle that keeps happening again and again.