I’ll never be the one to say that Paul Thomas Anderson, polymath scribe of stone-cold cinema classics like Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, The Master, Magnolia, Phantom Thread, and so many others, is doing too much, as the kids say. For most directors, being able to put your name on even one of these films, much less all of them, would be an accolade. And while he insists on packing his films with talent, with humour, with every possible genre from action to drama to comedy to even horror elements and all points in between, not a moment of it feels like it doesn’t belong.
With his newest, One Battle After Another, Anderson is back on form. Not that he ever truly left, but after a couple of divisive titles like Licorice Pizza and Inherent Vice (even though I personally love both), he’s operating at peak levels once again. In this one, Anderson turns his sharp eye and storytelling chops at far-right societal and governmental forces, as well as an incendiary look at leftist revolutionary movements in a very loose reimagining of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland. All of this is done in one of the most populist, easily digestible films that PTA has ever produced. It’s brash, it’s explosive, it’s one of his most shriekingly funny projects, and it wears its heart on its sleeve. One Battle After Another‘s nearly three-hour runtime feels, as a result, like barely half that. But there’s real depth underneath that’s never undercut by the film’s lighter moments, and it’s in fact complemented and amplified by them.
In One Battle After Another, Anderson depicts an alternate ’90s America in which a leftist group called the French 75 is enacting radical, violent (but not overly so) action against various American military, carceral, and capitalist systems. Led by operatives and lovers “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), we see several of these actions, including one against a military detention facility, which runs them up against Captain Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn). As they complete their mission, Lockjaw develops a sexual infatuation with Perfidia and the two engage in an affair after Lockjaw catches Perfidia planting a bomb during one of the French 75’s actions.
Soon after, Perfidia becomes pregnant and gives birth to a daughter, Charlene. Right away, Perfidia rejects motherhood and even outright states that she feels jealousy for the way that Pat dotes on Charlene and starves Perfidia of the attention he once lavished on her. She eventually leaves and is soon apprehended after a botched mission, and Lockjaw assists with springing her into Witness Protection in exchange for Perfidia ratting out several of the members of the French 75, some of whom are arrested and others killed. Perfidia abandons Lockjaw and Witness Protection and vanishes, while Pat and Charlene are squirrelled away to Baktan Cross, California, where they assume the identities of Bob and Willa Ferguson.
Fast forward sixteen years, and Bob has taken up a steady diet of drugs and alcohol, becoming a Lebowski-esque burnout. Willa, for her part, is an independent and strong-willed teen who’s been taking karate under the tutelage of Baktan Cross’s resident Sensei, played by Benicio del Toro. Lockjaw is still around and has become known to a shadowy group of white supremacists called the Christmas Adventurers Club. Desperate to join their ranks, Lockjaw seeks to head off the rigorous background check and his race-mixing past by tracking down Willa and Bob. He leverages the full strength of his immigration and drug task force to execute an operation on the sanctuary city and its residents. Sensei springs into action and jumps to the aid of his idol and inspiration, Bob, in one of the year’s most compelling team-ups.
Both the French 75 and the Christmas Adventure Club are brilliantly drawn caricatures of what the left and the right think that they’re up against. Probably accurate in each sides’ intent but far overestimating their competence and capabilities, a white supremacist basement organization with complete dominion over the military and which can spin up an operation on a small town with a moment’s notice with the thinnest of justification is pitted against a leftist paramilitary force with access to near-magical weapons and technology and a vast, even more magical whisper network.
Sean Penn’s Lockjaw is the year’s best villain. Styled as Robert F. Kennedy with a Vincent Kennedy McMahon gait, he is a force so domineering and vicious and racist that it bleeds through the screen. He is a character so perfectly drawn and portrayed that it seems unhinged to have an awards conversation for 2025 that omits Penn. Similarly, Benicio del Toro’s Sensei is affable and satisfyingly capable. His unwavering loyalty as the ultimate wingman to DiCaprio’s Pat/Bob is palpable and so glorious to behold that it left me wanting even more. Sensei moves through One Battle After Another as gently and as powerfully as the ocean waves he constantly references. The only thing that might keep del Toro from winning a Best Supporting Actor accolade is that Penn gets quite a bit more screen time. But what should actually win here is their perfect duality. Just as Pat and Perfidia feel perfectly contrasted but in a way that produces something as beautiful as Charlene, Lockjaw and Sensei feel matched in a way to provide equal forces competing for control of her and Pat.
And speaking of Charlene, I’m astounded that this is newcomer Chase Infiniti’s first feature. Even set against some of the heaviest hitters in Hollywood, both in front of and behind the camera, she excels and elevates the material well beyond her experience. A guttural scream she utters late in the film genuinely jarred me, and Infiniti’s confidence and command of the screen, especially when she shares so many scenes with DiCaprio, is one of the fastest I’ve ever gone from not knowing who an actor was to thinking that she’s one of the best out here doing it. I can’t wait to see how Infiniti wields the inner strength she displays here in other roles, and for her to receive her due recognition for this one.
Paul Thomas Anderson has built a stage for all these performances with every tool available to him as a director. Visually, a film like this shouldn’t benefit materially from formats like IMAX and 70mm, but at least in the former case, from my own experience and anecdotally in the latter, One Battle After Another is stunning and enrapturing on the largest possible screen with the biggest sound system you can muster. Scenes like rooftop foot chases and desert car chases feel like the movies you love, being re-adapted with all the impact of a modern master behind them. Set against a killer score by Jonny Greenwood and featuring some of the year’s most evocative needle drops, this becomes one of the most enjoyable theatre experiences I’ve had in some time.
For me, there are two tiers of Paul Thomas Anderson projects. One Battle After Another may not be the Paul Thomas Anderson of the carefully-studied and laser-focused prestige character portrait typified by There Will Be Blood, The Master, Punch-Drunk Love, or Phantom Thread, but it’s the best (to date) example of the Coen-esque PTA ensemble film exemplified by Boogie Nights, Hard 8, and, to a certain extent, Magnolia. It’s definitely Anderson’s best-crafted adaptation of the notoriously hard-to-adapt Thomas Pynchon. It is, along with Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, 2025’s best argument for getting your ass off the couch and into a cinema. The good one, with the 70mm projector or the IMAX auditorium or, if you’re one of the lucky few, the ultra-rare Vistavision format in which the film was originally shot. And when you do, you’ll be rewarded with a surgical and – it feels weird to say this about a movie that exceeds two and a half hours – concise satire of authoritarian fascism that couldn’t possibly be more timely and welcome. It’s brilliant, funny, and heartwrenchingly effective in delivering its message about the viciousness and lovelessness that come with throwing one’s lot in with white supremacy and fascism. I can already tell that I’ll be revisiting this film one time after another, and another.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is playing in several different formats, including Vistavision, 70mm, and IMAX, in various markets worldwide from Warner Bros. I saw it in IMAX.
