All of Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies share in common a particular cinematic flair, and there is no denying his affection for the 1970s and/or Los Angeles as a backdrop, but he is a filmmaker who is nonetheless impossible to fit into a single box as a storyteller. His eclecticism has seen him bounce from tales of aspiring porn stars, to Adam Sandler-led romance, to oil prospector drama, to hippie-driven mystery. Each of his films feels like the writer/director taking on a big and new challenge to his craft. In that sense, One Battle After Another is both one of his grandest swings and one of his most spectacular successes.
One Battle After Another
Release Date: September 26, 2025
Directed By: Paul Thomas Anderson
Written By: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor, Sean Penn, Chase Infiniti, Regina Hall, and Benicio Del Toro
Rating: R for pervasive language, violence, sexual content, and drug use
Runtime: 161 minutes
The movie has the novel Vineland by Thomas Pynchon as its base (Anderson’s second time working from the author’s source material after 2014’s Inherent Vice), but with that book being unadaptable as a big screen story, the filmmaker carves out certain details and elements, alters major protagonists, antagonists and events, and forges an epic that is equally funny, dramatic and thrilling – an all-around blissful big screen experience. And on top of everything else, it delivers a revolutionary spirit that couldn’t possibly be more apt for our current political moment in the United States.
We meet our protagonist “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) as he joins in with a far-left organization called the French 75 – which carries out missions liberating detained immigrants, attacking political offices, and sabotaging the power grid. Pat falls in love with the extreme and unpredictable Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), and the group has a successful run, but it all comes apart due to Perfidia’s relationship with the fascistic Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), whom she meets as a commanding officer at a detention center.
An affair between Perfidia and Lockjaw results in her becoming pregnant, but things go from bad to worse when she is captured after a botched bank job. She agrees to flip on all the members of the French 75, and while she opts for escape to Mexico over witness protection, she forces all of her colleagues to go into hiding – including Pat and her young daughter, Charlene.
Sixteen years later, Pat and Charlene have transformed into Bob and Willa Ferguson (Chase Infiniti), the former having become a stoner burnout who parents through paranoia but has raised a smart and capable daughter. They live a normal life in the community of Baktan Cross, but everything goes to hell with the return of Steven Lockjaw – who is in consideration to join the exclusive white supremacist group known as the Christmas Adventurers Club and needs to silence any discussion that he has a biracial love child.
One Battle After Another has a powerful statement to make amid some wonderful goofiness.
If you picked up on the contrasting tones of “liberating detained immigrants” and the existence of an organization that calls itself the Christmas Adventures Club, congratulations, because you have picked up on a sample of what makes One Battle After Another such a wonderful and unique work. In less capable hands, a movie juggling these kinds of elements would suffer an identity crisis, undercutting its own messaging and leaving the audience unclear what they are watching, but Paul Thomas Anderson has made a film that is able to be both super goofy and insightful.
When Steven Lockjaw sets his sights on Baktan Cross, a dual narrative is born, made to diverge before eventually colliding. Willa, who is at a school dance when shit starts to hit the fan, is whisked away to safety by Deandra (Regina Hall), a French 75 member who has gotten wind of new moves against the group, and through their journey of escape, the young girl grows to understand the meaning of the fight and some devastating truths about her parentage.
Meanwhile, Bob, who has spent years successfully waging war on his own brain cells, has to gather together what shreds of competency he retains to try and find Willa and protect her – though he fortunately has an ally in the mysterious Sensei Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro), who helps support the local immigrant community and shepherds the revolutionary on his mission. You can probably guess which side of the story has more of the laughs, but they are equally engaging and propulsive.
Everything is motivated by the character’s emotions and passion, from the fight against tyranny to the love between a father and daughter (providing all of the stakes that the film needs), and it’s executed with a satirical bent that allows it to be as funny as it is fascinating in its examination of modern America. It’s too fun to ever be heavy-handed or border on anything near preachy, and still powerful and smart.
Leonardo DiCaprio is the shining star of One Battle After Another, but Teyana Taylor is a powerful scene-stealer.
The film is a second crack at 21st century satire for Leonardo DiCaprio following the swing-and-miss that is Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, but One Battle After Another is his opportunity to find his version of The Dude, and it’s a wild success. Pat is a key cog in the machine as the explosives expert of the French 75, but pot does some impressive damage to his focus and faculties and it’s a trip seeing DiCaprio belly crawl on mats beneath the large windows of a dojo, bicker on the phone with a comrade because he can’t recall all of his code phrases, and (unsuccessfully) leap across rooftops.
There are no weak links in the chain across the ensemble cast, but it has its standouts. Benicio del Toro offers a perfect contrasting energy to what DiCaprio is doing, with Sensei St. Carlos ever-offering an air of calm capability, and Sean Penn effectively turns Lockjaw into a horrible-yet-unstoppable force. But if there’s any complaint to be offered, it’s that the story ultimately gives us so little of Teyana Taylor’s Perfidia Beverly Hills, as the actress is utterly electric on screen and the character is a force from which you can’t turn away.
Without question, Paul Thomas Anderson has made one of the best movies of 2025.
To go along with the mix of drama and comedy is a hefty dose of action unlike anything we’ve seen before from Paul Thomas Anderson, and the filmmaker’s 1970s sensibilities mesh spectacularly with the thrills – from the opening sequence with the French 75 in action, to the raid that sees Bob quickly forced to evacuate his home, to a heart-racing car chase that climaxes with explosive cleverness. Anderson’s propensity to lead the audience with an unblinking eye envelopes you in the movie’s dense and authentic world, and sequences (like Bob’s hectic journey behind the scenes of Sensei Sergio St. Carlos’ operation) are simply jaw-dropping.
This is a passion project that Paul Thomas Anderson has been wanting to make for a while, and it’s incredible passion well-applied. The scope and tone is to be marveled at, and it’s both fun and emotionally fulfilling. One will be hard pressed to find a richer time at the movies than One Battle After Another in 2025, and it’s unquestionably one of the best films of the year.
