The colonel of Sean Penn Lockjaw in one battle after another could be the most disturbing villain of the year

Paul Thomas AndersonThe last film, One battle after the otherNot only does it provide another wild and stratified story, it also gives us one of the most disturbing bad guys to hit the screen over the years. It is so terrifying precisely because it is thus feeling with real discomfort.

The film follows Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a former revolutionary forced to hide after his radical past returned to persecute him. That disturbing arrives in the form of Sean PennColonel Steven J. Lockjaw, a racist zealot scarred in battle determined to erase the mistakes of his youth.

What takes place is a story of cat and mouse anchored by one of the tastiest antagonists that Anderson has ever put on the screen.

Because Lockjaw works as well as a bad guy

On the surface, Lockjaw seems nothing more than a hardened soldier. But below, his psychology is a mess of hypocrisy, insecurity and hunger for validation from the ugliest corners of society.

His loyalty to the white supremist group absurdly called “The Christmas Adventurers Club”, his predatory fixation on Teyana Taylor’s Firebrand Revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills and her obsessive push to kill her daughter Willa (Infinite chase) Paint a portrait of someone monstrous.

That balance is what makes him attack. It is not a super -market. He is a broken and hateful man whose world visitor leagues in ways that are disturbingly familiar.

Penn’s performances push it beyond the edge

Penn has already played his part of grilling and intense characters, but Lockjaw gives him room to become darker and more stratified than usual. His very first scene gives the tone while perfidy tempered an immigrated detention center only to be faced by Lockjaw in a stall that bends with sexual threats and power games.

In the minor hands, the scene could have collapsed under its provocation. Instead, Anderson’s control and Penn’s precision create a disturbing base that repays for the rest of the film.

From there, every time Lockjaw enters the frame, the atmosphere changes. His obsession with the perfidious feels both grotesque and tragic, reflecting the bad contradictions that define it. He could have easily slipped into the caricature, but Penn digs in the deformed humanity of the character, making him more frightening than any exaggerated bad guy.

Because Anderson needed a villain like this

Some might wonder why Anderson, adapting Thomas Pynchon’s VinelandHe leaned on a bizarre and grotesque figure like Lockjaw. But in a story about the revolution, state violence and white supremacy hidden in plain sight, the choice seems essential.

Lockjaw is not just a bad man, it is a composite of toxic law, racism and authoritarianism. It embodies everything that the young generation of fighters of the film is rejecting, in particular Willa, captured between the revolutionary legacy of his mother and the poisonous vision of his father’s world.

The lasting image

The latest moments of Lockjaw are as grotesque as ironic as it is gassed by its own allies, disfigured and buring in a furnace after making their way towards power. It is a brutal end, but adapts to a character defined by hatred and hypocrisy.

In a film full of strong performances, Dicaprio anchoring the story, Taylor who burns the screen as perfidy, and Chase Infiniti has almost guaranteed the attention of the prizes, is Penn’s Lockjaw who lingers longer in the mind.

He is the most unforgettable bad of the year because he is not a monster for myth, but a mirror of hatred and insecurity of the real world.