‘One Battle After Another’ – Review
When Paul Thomas Anderson steps behind the camera, audiences know to expect something bold, brazen, and unforgettable. With One Battle After Another, he unleashes a 21st-century epic that feels tailor-made for 2025. This is a rousing, adrenaline-charged political thriller that slices across genres; part drama, part actioner, part fever dream, and it lands with the kind of impact that can only be called pure cinema. It’s not just one of the year’s standout films: it’s a flat-out masterpiece.
When their evil enemy resurfaces after 16 years, a group of ex-revolutionaries reunites to rescue one of their own’s daughter.
Anderson, or PTA as cinephiles affectionately know him, has carved out a singular place in modern cinema. Over nearly three decades, he’s proven himself unclassifiable, constantly pushing the medium in unexpected directions. From the combustible rise-and-fall of Boogie Nights, to the sprawling humanism of Magnolia, to the monumental, earth-shaking intensity of There Will Be Blood, Anderson is a filmmaker who defies convention. You can’t box him in by genre or formula. And now, with One Battle After Another, he’s delivered his most daring, incendiary, and ambitious work yet, a film that detonates off the screen with audacity.
Loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, Anderson plunges audiences into the firestorm of late-20th-century radicalism and the fallout of unchecked revolution. This is a story about chaos, consequence, and the ripple effects of violence, refracted through the cracked mirror of today’s cultural moment. In tapping into the anger, unrest, and volatility of our current political climate, Anderson has crafted a work that doesn’t just speak to the present — it practically screams.
The film’s narrative unfolds around the shadowy left-wing collective known as The French 75 and one of its most infamous founding members, “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun, better known by his moniker, The Rocket Man (Leonardo DiCaprio). A radical-turned-fugitive, Pat is forced to abandon his cause after a violent incident with both his lover and the group’s leader, Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor). Now living under the name Bob Ferguson, he’s raising his infant daughter while staying one step ahead of his past. Fifteen years later, that past comes roaring back. Bob is now a washed-up burnout, self-medicating his way through life with a teenage daughter, Willa, whose rebellious streak drags them both into a deadly kidnapping plot. To save her, Bob has to step back into the flames he thought he’d escaped.
That’s just the surface of One Battle After Another. Beneath it lies a maelstrom of betrayal, ideology, violence, and identity, each moment escalating into the next with delirious unpredictability. Watching this film is like being strapped into a rollercoaster blindfolded — you never know which way it’s going to turn, but the ride is electric.
At the heart of it all is Leonardo DiCaprio, delivering one of the finest performances of his storied career. As Bob Ferguson, he’s a man torn between past and present, idealism and disillusionment, fatherhood and failure. DiCaprio sheds every trace of movie star sheen, fully embodying a tragicomic figure who is both pitiful and heroic in equal measure. His performance swings between slapstick mania, simmering tension, and raw vulnerability, often in the same scene. Under Anderson’s direction, DiCaprio gives a performance that’s impossible to pin down and utterly captivating to watch. It’s a live wire of a role, and DiCaprio doesn’t just rise to the occasion — he burns the house down. Give him the Oscar now.
As always with Anderson, the supporting cast is equally stacked and equally committed. Sean Penn is terrifying as Col. Steven J. Lockjaw, the embodiment of militant right-wing rage, a clenched-jawed crusader of xenophobic hate who will stop at nothing to wipe out The French 75. It’s a feral, unflinching performance that chills to the bone. Benicio del Toro, meanwhile, steals every scene as Sergio St. Carlos, a martial arts master who straddles the line between comic relief and spiritual guide. His presence injects the film with eccentric vitality and unexpected pathos. And then there’s Teyana Taylor as Perfidia Beverly Hills—Bob’s ex, Willa’s mother, and the militant flame still burning at the heart of The French 75. Taylor is magnetic, embodying a revolutionary fervor that’s equal parts seductive and terrifying. Her turn cements her as one of the film’s breakout forces, and she’s bound to draw major awards attention.
Visually, One Battle After Another is nothing short of breathtaking. Cinematographer Michael Bauman shoots the film with an anarchic energy that mirrors its story, lacing together frantic handheld grit with moments of surreal, painterly beauty. The action sequences hit like Molotov cocktails: fiery, unpredictable, and explosive. The first act, in particular, is a masterclass in chaos, an extended stretch of bravura filmmaking that leaves you slack-jawed. But Anderson isn’t just staging action for spectacle; every frame is loaded with tension, symbolism, and thematic resonance. The result is a sensory onslaught that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible.
What makes One Battle After Another so compelling isn’t just its breakneck pace or its jaw-dropping performances; it’s the way Anderson taps directly into the cultural pulse. This is a movie about America at its boiling point, about the combustible intersection of politics, ideology, and violence. It’s not a film of speeches and slogans; it’s a film of fists, firebombs, and fury. And in that way, it feels eerily and uncomfortably close to home. In a moment where political discourse has turned toxic and violent outbursts feel ever more common, Anderson’s film isn’t just relevant: it’s urgent.
As the narrative barrels forward, One Battle After Another becomes something more than just a political thriller. It’s an exploration of generational inheritance, of the scars parents leave on children, of the ways idealism curdles into disillusionment. At its core, it’s a story about Bob and Willa — a father trying, and failing, to escape the wreckage of his past, and a daughter trying to carve out her own path in the shadow of it. That intimate thread grounds the larger spectacle, giving the film a heartbeat beneath the chaos.
By the time the credits roll, audiences are left breathless, shaken, and exhilarated. This is cinema that demands to be felt as much as understood. It doesn’t just entertain: it provokes, it unsettles, it makes you reckon with the world outside the theatre. Anderson has always been a master of crafting narratives that burn themselves into your brain, and One Battle After Another might be his most searing achievement yet.
In a year already brimming with cinematic heavyweights, this film towers above the rest. One Battle After Another is big, brash, and utterly uncompromising, the kind of movie that reminds you what the big screen is for. It’s exhilarating, exhausting, and extraordinary all at once. Movies don’t get much better than this.
This is not just one of the best films of 2025. It’s one of the defining films of the decade.
Image: Warner Brothers Pictures
