Ben O'Shea: Timing Is Everything

Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film arrives at a tricky time, given the current state of world affairs. The story follows a group of ex-revolutionaries who reunite after 16 years when an old enemy resurfaces and kidnaps the daughter of one of their own. While the timing may be awkward, the filmmaking itself is undeniable -  the music choices and set pieces are striking, with Ben calling one car chase “one of the best ever put to screen.” Tune in to hear what Ben O'Shea gave the film. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Great the flick with Beno morning, Good morning guys. I've
got one for all the film nerds out there. Oh well,
I did like the look of the trailer. This is
a film nerd, Yeah, exactly. At least this is going
to be right up your alley. So from director Paul
Thomas Anderson, who you know, known better to his friends

(00:24):
as Pta. That's what all the cool kids call him,
so ptaight. He of course is an auteur director who
really kicked off his career in great fashion with Boogie
Knights and then has given us films like There Will
Be Blood, which is considered one of the greatest films
of the twenty first century. More recently, Licorice Pizza and

(00:46):
Phantom Thread. Both of those films were nominated for Best
Picture at the Academy Awards. So he is in the
absolute upper echelon of directors in Hollywood. So every time
he's got a new film coming out, people are very
excited to see what he's going to do. It's kind
of like, you know, like if the Tarantino who's got
a new film coming out, it's just one of those
movies that you circle in the calendar as this is

(01:06):
going to be interesting, and so his latest film sees
him team up with Leonardo DiCaprio for the first time,
one battle after another. But I will say right off
the bat that timing is everything, and I think, unfortunately
for Pta, is timing this time around is just terrible.

(01:27):
Who so well, So the film kicks off, like you
realize straight away what I'm talking about. So the opening
scene in the film is a group of radical left
activists in America doing an armed raid on an ice facility.
Timing almost down to the day. Oh yeah, not great,

(01:51):
not great at all. So you know, it's like every
now and then you see this happen where there might
be a film about like a plane getting hijacked and
then there's you know, some sort of plane crash, or
a movie about a shark and then there's a fatal
shark attack, or a movie about a bushfire and then
there's a devastating bushfire. Like these things, these there's sometimes
this timing lines up, and it's always terrible coincidence for

(02:13):
the filmmakers, and you know, people impacted by these real
life situations. And so unfortunately for Pta, that's kind of
what the environment in which this film is going to
land and it's a bit unfortunate, and he wrote it
obviously years ago, and the films take a long time
to make. And so after this initial sequence where there's

(02:34):
this raid on this immigration detention facility in America, Leonardo
DiCaprio's character past plays like a sort of a demolitions expert,
and he's he's in love with the sort of the
leader of the revolutionaries who whose name is for Fidia,
and she's this kind of like really strong African American
character who has this weird kind of sexual tension moment

(02:59):
with the commanding officer of the detention center played by
Sean Penn, which is kind of it's kind of a
bit odd at the time, but it really sets a
train of events in motion that carries throughout the whole film,
where you end up with this sort of weird love
triangle between Leo and Pafidia, and then Sean Penn's character,

(03:21):
who's a really kind of like uptight military man but
has this kind of obsession with this revolutionary and then
the film fast forwards sixteen years into the future when
the female character as kind of like off the agenda
and it's just Leonardo DiCaprio's pat is trying to raise

(03:41):
a teenage daughter, and then all of a sudden realizes
that this guy from the past, this military dude, is
coming after them, and he's relentless and he's going to
stop at nothing until he captures Leo and his teen
daughter played by newcomer Chase Infinity in her first movie role.
She's going to be a superstar. I can tell you
that Inanity. Yeah what a name, right, It sounds exciting

(04:06):
for the movie. Ye, yeah, And so the film kind
of goes from there. I would say the positives. It's
incredibly well directed. The score is amazing, like the music
and the choice of music in this film is just
as good as anything you'll ever see in a film.
And there are some sequences that cinematically are certain to

(04:29):
be iconic and certainly will be studied in film schools
for the next twenty years. There's a car chase sequence
that is one of the best that I've ever seen
captured on film. And so there's a lot of really
really good things about it. Oh well, it's not so much.
It's not so much because it's you know, this sort
of breakneck action. It's just so cleverly done using the

(04:53):
landscape of the desert that you're watch it, you go, wow,
that's just so clever. But the negatives Sean Penn's character is,
you know, he looks like he's having the time of
his life and he's obviously a two time Oscar winner.
But it gets a little bit cartoonish, I think, and
I think the film, as I mentioned before, the timing
the film suffers because you know, when Pta was writing this,

(05:16):
which is kind of loosely adapted from a Thomas pinch
On novel from nineteen ninety, which was sort of set
in the Reagan era in nineteen eighties, this is kind
of set in our modern time. So when Pta wrote
this film, he kind of conceived it as romanticizing the
radical left and ridiculing the conservative politicians. So he kind

(05:38):
of deliberately makes them look so stupid. And unfortunately that
joke is just not very funny at the moment, because
you know, that's not really how no like when Pta
came up with this, you know, it just it just
hasn't aged well because you look at what's happening in
America right now, and who's laughing who's at laughing? At

(05:59):
the timing is everything, isn't it all? Right, well, how many?
And it also has Benizzio del Toro's in it. Of course,
he's amazing as always. He plays he plays just real quick.
Bevancia to Toro plays the karate instructor of Leonardo DiCaprio's daughter,
and Leo calls him sense all the time, gets him

(06:21):
broke in because it wrote him into the action. You
can use that is perfect. It looks like classic Vinizzio.
Oh yeah he is. He is the best. He's the
best in this. So what do you give it? I'm
going to give it. I'm going to give it four styles.
This will get all the nomination. It's an extremely well
good movie, extremely extremely well made movie. Lines by the timing,

(06:43):
but yeah, amazing. So separate yourself from that and enjoy it. Okay,
thank you, Ben, Thanks Ben, love it, thank you. All right,
all right, there's your weekend viewing sort of