One Battle After Another (2025)
SHOULD I SEE IT?
YES
One Battle After Another is a defining film of 2025, if not the decade. Urgent and restless, messy and volatile, surprisingly funny and ambitious, it reflects much of the world we find ourselves in.
This ensemble delivers: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, and Benicio del Toro as good as ever, a star-making turn by Chase Infiniti, a powerhouse performance from Teyana Taylor, and a subtle, but moving appearance by Regina Hall. Everyone is at the top of their game here.
From the directing and storytelling by Paul Thomas Anderson to the performances on screen. From the stunning score composed by Jonny Greenwood to the immersive cinematography by Michael Baumann and precise editing from Andy Jurgensen, this is craftsmanship at its highest level.
NO
Lives in a constant state of anxiety and unsettled emotional balance. No movie is loved by everyone and some may find the tension and overall length of the film not their style.
Takes some wild swings in tone and feel and is unafraid to speak to the political climate we find ourselves in today. May be too messy, all over the map, and wants to have a conversation some people are not ready to have.
Sean Penn’s performance is either going to be viewed as brilliant and unforgettable or over-the-top and obnoxious. For me, all things can be true. However, his presence and this performance will prove polarizing for some viewers.
OUR REVIEW
As Gil Scott-Heron reminds us over the end credits of Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film, the revolution will not be televised. What happens, however, when the revolution becomes older, burned out, focused on other things, and left to find a place within a world that seems to push forward despite all of one’s efforts to change it for what they perceive to be better?
This is just one of many areas Anderson covers in his brilliant, burly, anxiety-laden, but fascinating One Battle After Another. An incredible cinematic experience - as sprawling, ambitious, and rebellious as it is erratic, eccentric, and seeking to find humor in unsettled and scary times, the filmmaker quite simply may have created one of the most important films of the decade.
Provocative in presentation, the film is unafraid in showcasing a group of revolutionaries who seek to literally bomb the system. Dubbed the French 75, they are led by a firebrand of a personality - Perfidia Beverly Hills, played with swagger and bombast by Teyana Taylor. Explosives expert Pat Calhoun, dubbed “Ghetto Pat” (Leonardo DiCaprio), joins the fray as the group, when we first meet them, seek to free immigrants contained in a military-led detention center.
An immediate connection sparks between Pat and Perfidia, but as they develop a personal connection, the French 75 become more aspirational and take on more activities. This puts them directly in the crosshairs of Col. Steven Lockjaw, a stiff, rigid, walking powderkeg of a human being who seems to have racism, misogyny, violent outbursts, and a proclivity for sexual humiliation pulsing through his veins. As portrayed by Sean Penn, in a stunning performance, Lockjaw is a combustible force who proves every bit as tenacious as the revolutionaries he pursues.
He also is hopelessly obsessed with Perfidia. And after Perfidia catches Lockjaw vulnerable and unprepared in an altercation, he becomes the proverbial dog with a bone. His relentless obsessions find him looking for anyone and anything connected to Perfidia, which eventually places him on a collision course with Pat.
Throughout the first part of the film, Anderson, very loosely adapting Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland,” blends off-kilter humor and aggressive behavior, with scenes of intimacy between Pat and Perfidia to underscore distinctive differences between the couple. When a child is born, shifts in the relationship occur. Perfidia holds strong to her ideals and is willing to keep fighting while Pat’s beliefs are now tempered a bit by becoming a father.
For all the excitement surrounding the French 75 in the film’s first act, a sobering reality hits Pat in the middle of the film. As Anderson pushes us forward 16 years, he is now known as “Bob Ferguson” and he and his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) live off-the-grid in a sanctuary city known as Baktan Cross. Willa is thriving in school, while Bob’s predilection for pot and booze paints him as the aging radical.
Through a brilliant DiCaprio performance, Anderson explores deeper questions of rebelliousness gone dry. What happens when our obsessions lead to desperation? And does it soften the fight within the revolutionary when they find and feel love?
A contrast emerges when Bob, someone willing to bomb buildings and potentially take out “bad agents,” finds himself desperately trying to protect his daughter. It is no surprise that Lockjaw re-emerges in Bob’s life, but Anderson’s screenplay keeps us guessing as to what comes next. As the internet memes say, “This Is Cinema!” and few films in recent years have been this precise in balancing action, suspense, humor, and excitement.
One Battle After Another envelopes you, shakes you, and feels like the rare movie that comes along only once in a great while. It’s the kind of movie you can’t stop talking and thinking about. And I felt this one other time this year with Sinners - a densely layered exploration of the history of Black culture in America told through the framing of a vampire film. As Ryan Coogler made Sinners feel vital, necessary, and important to the cultural conversation, Anderson hopes to find his film engaging in a similar discussion.
No matter how we view the world right now, a reasonable person cannot look at America, in 2025, and make the case that times are normal. We live in a disruptive, cruel world right now. People have never been more polarized. Anderson sees this and seeks to confront the divisions we share, while also being open and honest about the impact living like this has on people. For all the humor and outrageousness we experience in the film, Anderson is stone cold sober in realizing that things are pretty messed up, and there’s a palpable fear that the battles we face against one another and within ourselves keep us stifled, stuck, and unable to move forward.
Listen to what Jonny Greenwood created with his score. Full of unsettled and unpredictable symphonic stabs, we also get staccato, almost hypnotic piano strikes which keep us on edge and unbalanced. In some scenes, Greenwood floods the scene with an explosion of sound, while in other moments, he creates low-key anxiety, amplifying percussion and crashing together different genres of music to create one wholly unique soundtrack of emotional swings and flourishes.
And yet - everything fits together. The music connects to the tension. The cinematography enhances Anderson’s wide-ranging storytelling, including a brilliant way of filming a consequential chase scene that literally had my stomach in knots. Michael Baumann, the Director of Photography, creates a world that feels both vast and close. In the action sequences comprising the early part of the film, we are embedded with the French 75. When a member of the group re-emerges as a protector of Willa, Deandra (Regina Hall) is often filmed in tight close-up. Her eyes capture fear but also radiate care and concern. The visuals match the chaotic tension that Anderson so masterfully designs and the editing work by Andy Jurgensen could not be more precise or locked in with Anderson’s vision.
DiCaprio’s rugged, wounded, and stoned out performance is yet another iconic creation in an extraordinary body of work. Penn will divide audiences, who will see his performance as either appropriately diabolical and sinister, or obnoxious and over-the-top. For me, all things can be true. His physicality and ferocity are staggering and in a storied, controversial, Oscar-winning career, we have never seen him quite like this.
Benicio del Toro has a great supporting turn as the cool-headed and sensible Sergio, a sensei who trains Willa and is seen as a protector and leader of Baktan Cross’ immigrant community. He counterbalances Bob’s volatile emotional energy, with a steady demeanor that fits in perfectly with everything happening on screen.
Early on, Taylor sets a tone of danger, explosiveness, survival and vulnerability. Infiniti, portraying Willa in her feature film debut, gives a star-making turn as Bob’s daughter, trying to understand his past, what it means for her present and future, and attempting to rationalize everything she thinks she knows about her world as it comes crashing down all around her.
At 162 minutes, the film never feels long. Anderson meanders here and there, but never bores us. At times the film is violent, but with meaning and intent. The craftsmanship is exemplary. The performances are flawless. And I found myself in awe of everything Anderson juggles here.
A story about revolution, parenthood, obsession, and survival amid unsettled and increasingly dangerous times, One Battle After Another feels like something of an assessment and performance review of America in its present state. Unruly and unforgettable, this is one of 2025’s defining films.
CAST & CREW
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Chase Infiniti, Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall, Alana Haim, Wood Harris, Shayna McHayle, Paul Grimstad, Dijon Duenas, Tony Goldwyn, D.W. Moffett, Kevin Tighe, Jim Downey, Starletta DuPois, James Raterman, April Grace, Jena Malone
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Written by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Inspired by the novel “Vineland” by Thomas Pynchon
Release Date: September 26, 2025
Warner Bros.