One Battle After Another explores parenthood and American politics in a thrilling action epic by one of our all time greats.
Mild spoilers, you’ve been warned, but this is a movie that’s quite hard to spoil so just go watch it.
Paul Thomas Anderson (aka PTA) is perhaps one of the best at something I call movie ‘Trojan horsing’, i.e., wrapping something simple in a heap of other thematic heady stuff. Bear with me here.
Boogie Nights is a family story wrapped in the sweaty, drug-addled tapestry of a 1970s period film about the porn industry. Magnolia weaponises operatic melancholy and calloused-over emotions to tell a story about a son and his dying father. There Will Be Blood is a father and son story that’s corrupted by capitalism and oil. Phantom Thread is a marriage story stitched into the linings of the 1950s fashion world.
It wasn’t until a recent re-listen to PTA’s great 2015 chat with Marc Maron that it all became crystal clear to me: All the importance and big ideas constantly being projected onto PTA by movie lovers and the wider movie ecosystem are valid, but at the end of the day he’s really just a guy who makes personal movies where things ‘start small and hopefully get bigger from there’ and hopefully there are some laughs to be found.
One Battle After Another feels like the ultimate encapsulation of PTA’s movie-making ethos and easily one of his best (so far). Starting small with a simple father/daughter story (clearly inspired by his own life), PTA layers things on until the whole thing is wrapped up in a politically charged spectacle that’s bigger – literally and metaphorically – than anything we’ll see this year. In other words, this is PTA’s ‘big-budget action’ movie.
Taking loose inspiration from Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, a story about “fascistic Nixonian repression” during the 1960s, One Battle After Another is set in the 21st century and kicks off with a revolutionary group called the French 75 initiating an operation to release detained immigrants. This ragtag group is led by Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (a fantastic Teyana Taylor), a walking whirlwind of anarchy who takes as much pleasure rescuing the immigrants as she does in sexually humiliating the military leader in charge, Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn).
From the gruff voice to the quirky physical mannerisms, Penn is perhaps the MVP of One Battle After Another. We know Lockjaw is a monster through and through, yet he’s endlessly entertaining to watch because people of that ilk are inherently comical in how stupid their bigotry is.
As Perfidia and Bob have a daughter, Willa (a star-making turn from Chase Infiniti), between revolutionary operations, Lockjaw becomes psychosexually obsessed with Perfidia. Synapses fried by his earlier encounter with her, Lockjaw stalks the family in the vain hope of having her dominate him (again), all while harbouring an unholy amount of self-loathing because he’s a racist piece of shit. As Lockjaw closes in, Perfidia goes AWOL while Bob and Willa get out of Dodge and head to California to lie low for a while.
As all of that unfolds in the opening act, I’m astounded by the assured confidence that audiences will keep up. There’s a lot less DiCaprio in the opening salvos than one might think and the emphasis on Perfidia may throw some people off, even if her role is crucial to the story. Perfidia’s character is fleshed out in a way that’s realistically flawed while also not judging her and her actions.
What’s also surprising to me is the movie’s breakneck pace. PTA typically lets his movies breathe with slow, atmospheric scenes, like the wordless prologue in There Will Be Blood, Freddie Quell’s intro in The Master, or Reynolds Woodcock obsessing over a dress in Phantom Thread. Definitely not the case here.
The camera is constantly in motion throughout the movie’s whopping 162 minute runtime. This isn’t new for PTA – he does this quite a bit in Boogie Nights – but whereas he previously employed dynamic camera moves in a way that called attention to itself, like a student letting everyone know that this is his best impression of other masters, the cinematography is almost understated in One Battle After Another. PTA is now one of the masters he once aped and the confidence shows in the long takes and wide sweeping shots he employs in this movie. The final result is cinematic storytelling so propulsive, almost bursting with jittery energy, that it feels like a breezy 90-minute flick.
DiCaprio also deserves credit for bringing a lot of this jittery energy. His best work comes when he goes manic bigly panicked guy with an appropriate amount of smarm and/or stupidity, and PTA allows him to go big here. Bob is a burnt-out single father whose revolutionary fire still flickers, yet you’re not sure if Bob’s a buffoon, incompetent, or a combination of both. DiCaprio has already solidified his place as one of cinema’s best on-screen idiots, and his first collaboration with PTA here is just extra paprika on the ham.
It’s impossible to not notice how prescient One Battle After Another is about all the fuckery going down in ‘Murica. Given that PTA has been working on this movie for nearly 20 years in some form or another, it’s clear that he’s given some critical thought into the whole politics of it all rather than knee-jerk reacting to recent events, and understands that ‘Murican politics (especially in the present day) is stupidly cartoonish. Immigration detention centres, corrupt military figures finding any bullshit excuse to exert their power, white nationalist caricatures, and even a cabal of rich white supremacists who are seemingly the puppet masters behind everything – hilariously known as the Christmas Adventurers – no one is spared.
The seamless interlacing of all ridiculous abuses of power unfolding in ‘Murica with the pulpy storytelling is immaculate. It’s all there right in front of you as perfectly valid commentary, yet it doesn’t threaten to overwhelm. PTA is too savvy for that and he keeps things grounded by ‘Trojan horsing’ in Bob and Willa as the movie’s central emotional core.
There’s an unsettling tension hanging over the entire movie. You just don’t know what will happen to Bob and Willa as Lockjaw closes in on them, yet you’re concerned for their wellbeing as PTA is as committed to emotionally investing us in their father/daughter relationship as he is in the immaculate staging of the movie’s several jaw-dropping set pieces. When Bob embarrasses Willa in front of her friends or sheds a tear after finding out how good a student she is, those smaller moments feel like this movie was made as a simple ode to parenthood.
For all the dark zaniness and masterful visual flourishes, this is also a deeply humanist movie. PTA is clearly terrified of his children growing up and how being a father can feel like, well, Bob falling over his feet trying to do the right thing for his daughter. There’s a concerted effort towards seeing the glass as half-full rather than empty – a far cry from the strained emotion and grim outlook of Magnolia and There Will Be Blood – almost like PTA is hoping for a world where his children can thrive rather than survive in.
One Battle After Another isn’t polemical or didactic about its big ideas. They’re there if you want to look at it like that, but the characters aren’t there to make a point or to express a certain point of view. This is just PTA’s version of a very personal movie about being a parent. It just so happens to be the most well-crafted home movie of the year and easily one of 2025’s best.