Sean Penn’s performance is an inventive and ambitious display of physical acting. Tewana Taylor and Chase Infiniti work really really hard. Leonardo DiCaprio experiments with ageing badly, to good effect. The film just didn’t work for me. Too long, no attack, god knows where the budget went, three jokes – and, for something inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s VINELAND, it has very little of Pynchon’s gleeful mad energy. There’s a logical break towards the end that threw me out of the film, but, honestly, it didn’t really hold my attention well after the first half hour anyway.
One suspects that on paper it all had a headlong madcap drive to it, but it didn’t survive shooting and indulgent editing. There are a handful of stunning shots, the three jokes are fun jokes, an escape scene on rooftops that’s nicely done and concluded, but this does not seem to be the Paul Thomas Anderson who once had full control of his material and did not waste a minute.
I came away from it feeling like it didn’t commit to the Pynchon, or to a tone – it’s obviously very well made (though I personally didn’t enjoy the score), it’s just kind of flat and slack when it seemed to me to be asking to be fast and lunatic and breathless – one battle after another, in fact.
I really wanted to like it, but it just wasn’t enough of anything.