One Battle After Another

I wanted so much to like One Battle After Another, but there is one major issue, and a few minor issues that not only lead me to dislike the film overall, but keep it from perfection.  Let me explain the last statement; I think that there could be such a thing as a perfect film that I just don't like, but it just so happens that in the case of One Battle After Another, the things that I don't like are also its cinematic sins.  

Let's start with the minor issues: 

1) The number of hills in the finale chase scene was too many.  Would one hill have been enough?  Probably not.  Would two hills have been enough?  Maybe.  Is there any reason to have more than three hills?  Absolutely not.  

2) What did the protagonists believe in?  Is it enough to simply oppose the antagonist to qualify as a protagonist?  Perhaps, but that's shallow, and feels like a cop-out.

3) Leonardo DiCaprio plays a blundering pothead in the film, which unwisely disregards what Paul Schrader said about DiCaprio's last role in a Scorsese film:

I would have preferred Leonardo DiCaprio to play the role of the cop in Killers of the Flower Moon rather than the role of the idiot.  Spending three-and-a-half hours in the company of an idiot is a long time.

The major issue: 

The antagonist played by Sean Penn, sporting a high-and-tight haircut, as the Christian right-wing white supremacist Colonel Lockjaw, is a cartoon, and his group of secret society "Christmas Adventurers Club" cohorts are something straight out of an Austin Powers movie.  The director, Paul Thomas Anderson, knows how to create a compelling antagonist:  Paul Dano as Paul/Eli Sunday in There Will Be Blood, and Vicky Krieps as Alma in The Phantom Thread - both (or all three, depending on your point of view) are powerful and complex characters, that are so wonderfully matched with their respective protagonist counterparts.  So why are the sympathetic domestic terrorists at the center of this film having to fight a bunch of MAGA buffoons?  It diminishes the position of the protagonist when the antagonist is depicted with such simplistic disregard.  Of course I realize that my position on this subject may not be in line with the Hollywood elite, so don't be surprised if Sean Penn gets Best Supporting Actor for his performance...  On second thought, be surprised if he doesn't.