‘One Battle After Another’ toasts Benicio del Toro’s great year with a few small beers

It took me a few minutes to realize what my fellow Brooklyn dad accompanying his kid trick-or-treating was dressed as. Then I saw what he was carrying around with him: an incomplete four-pack of Modelos. In other words: a few small beers. This man was dressed as Sergio St. Carlos, Benicio del Toro’s character in One Battle After Another, who utters that instantly iconic response quantifying his alcohol intake when he’s pulled over by the cops and admits he’s “had a few.” “A few what?” the cop persists, and then, well, if you’re online a bit, you know, though you may not be able to reproduce the playful little smile that accompanies del Toro’s reading.

It’s a quietly mischievous delivery—a minor character detail in the greater scheme of One Battle After Another, much of which is a frantic chase as former revolutionary Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) races to save his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) from white supremacist soldier Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), who in turn is racing to destroy any possible evidence of an interracial affair, of sorts, he had years ago. Sergio St. Carlos, referred to by Bob as Sensei because he teaches Willa karate, is a local community leader, referred to as a Latino Harriet Tubman, aiding undocumented immigrants as they avoid ICE (or its fictionalized equivalent). His “a few small beers” moment is really just part of a distraction; he’s allowed himself to be pulled over so that Bob can escape and continue on his mission to rescue Willa.

That line reading pops out, though, in part because del Toro’s performance doesn’t really have any bigger, showier moments to Osar-clip, even though he richly deserves a nomination. Yes, he’s more forceful just a few minutes earlier, when Sergio helps to psych Bob up to perform a dangerous jump from a moving car, invoking the name of writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s erstwhile Magnolia star Tom Cruise. But he stays on a relatively even keel opposite DiCaprio’s more intentionally (and hilariously) strenuous sputtering, fumbling, and ranting. It’s common to designate this or that character or actor as the heart and/or soul of a movie. Del Toro is more like the deep, calming breath of this one.

If he does score an Oscar nomination, in competition with a showier turn from co-star Sean Penn, it’ll cap a remarkable year where he also starred in another Anderson’s latest opus. As with Paul Thomas Anderson, who previously directed del Toro in Inherent Vice, Wes Anderson’s second film with del Toro gives him a bigger, better part – the lead, in fact. In The Phoenician Scheme, he plays Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda, a midcentury industrialist scheming to secure a vast infrastructure deal with the unlikely help of his semi-estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton), who is about to become a nun. Del Toro’s quiet style fits Anderson’s, where characters often speak in a deadpan monotone – though sometimes that’s been overstated, and accordingly there’s a running gag in Phoenician Scheme where Korda and the various men he negotiates with descend into contentious, overlapping shouting.

But for the most part, Korda projects a calm similar to Sergio’s, albeit in the opposite direction. While Sergio quickly, efficiently arranges for a group of immigrants to mobilize and escape the ICE-like task force hunting them, delegating and issuing orders as necessary, Korda’s assurances are more self-serving. “I myself feel very safe,” he says repeatedly, usually in the face of demonstrable danger as actual attempts are made on his life. Yet he’s not exactly projecting dishonesty when he says this, even as he passes out hand grenades like party favors. He, himself, does operate with the confidence that he will escape whatever situation alive and thriving.

Like Bob Ferguson, Korda forges a stronger bond with his daughter through the events of the film, though the dynamics are interestingly reversed. In The Phoenician Scheme, Korda learns to be a parent not by providing much emotional support for his daughter (who is an adult, somehow well-adjusted and seemingly not much in need of it) but by learning from her to embrace a more modest and net-positive way of living in the world, rejecting his own past rapaciousness. That’s not something Bob particularly needs to learn in One Battle After Another – he’s done plenty of time trying to save the world from itself, however ineffective his group may have ultimately been. Instead, he grows to accept his daughter’s place in that dangerous, unruly world, and the idea that she might carry on his work in her own way. Del Toro isn’t the actual father in this scenario, but he embodies the good that can still be done in trying times, where control has largely been ceded to people like Korda.

It’s especially gratifying to see del Toro as the face of this sensibility because most of his other recent notable roles have emphasized a certain gray-area seediness, which he also excels at. He has the kind of rich, memorable face with the capacity for a range of moral shadings at once. Think of the gangster sucked into the noir plot of No Sudden Move, the ruthless assassin of Sicario, or even DJ, the thief who eventually betrays the heroes in The Last Jedi. He first gained notice in The Usual Suspects as Fenster, a character whose big hook was mumbly, colorfully garbled speech, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, where he essentially placed in an addled ham-off with Johnny Depp. He’s long been up for the strange or inscrutable.

He’s not mumbly or shady or inscrutable in One Battle After Another – and though he’s morally shady, maybe even genuinely evil, at the beginning of The Phoenician Scheme, he’s also crisply upfront in manner, at least. Del Toro has the kind of charisma and adventurous spirit as an actor that can lead to plenty of catchy affectations – love his ch-ch-ch vocal bit in Last Jedi – but he’s also increasingly adept at stripping those away and giving his little showcase moments just the slightest bit of note-perfect spin. Hence the small beers, or the “ocean waves” he advises Bob to ride. One Battle After Another is a movie that feels big; even though much of it takes place in a small town and the surrounding desert, those rolling hills look massive during its climactic car chase. (Also, it’s a Paul Thomas Anderson movie with a climactic car chase.) DiCaprio usually goes big these days, too, often to great effect. But del Toro’s performance, in its simplicity, fills in the smaller spaces. It’s small-beer acting at its finest.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.