It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie so over-the-top as Paul Thomas Anderson’s broad satire One Battle After Another. It’s sometimes hilarious, sometimes thrilling and always outrageous.
Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Bob, the tinkering bomb-maker in French 75, a group of far-left revolutionaries led by Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), charismatic and oversexed and too in love with her own badass flamboyance. Sure enough, once they piss off the nation’s repressive law enforcement establishment, French 75 is destined to go the way of the Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army. In a shock-and-awe campaign led by Colonel Stephen J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), the revolutionaries are all neutralized or driven underground. Bob is able to get away and hide out under a new identity with Perfidia’s newborn daughter Willa.
The story resumes sixteen years later, with Bob and Willa living in a Northern California forest cabin. Bob is still a stoner underachiever, but he’s a devoted dad, and Willa (Chase Infiniti) has blossomed into a young woman of uncommon intelligence and curiosity. Suddenly, Lockjaw leads a military assault team to capture them, and the two are off on a two-hour race for their lives. When they become separated, Bob, despite his sparse hero skills, tenaciously tries to find her. Why has Lockjaw reappeared after sixteen years? He has his reasons, which I won’t spoil.
Paul Thomas Anderson, whose best movies are Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood, has a body of work that ranges from the super-serious (The Master) to the silly (Inherent Vice). But his movies are always character-driven and always centered in empathy – we understand what makes his characters tick. In this case, he celebrates the resilience of his protagonists.
What I haven’t seen before from Anderson are the violent attacks and white-knuckle chases that we see in more conventional Hollywood thrillers. Anderson delivers here, with a movie that’s chock-filled with exciting set pieces. The final chase on an up-and-down road called the Texas Dip outside Borrego Springs, California, is spectacular. Is this a political satire embedded in a thriller, or the other way around?
And about that broad satire – principal photography took place in the first seven months of 2024, before Trump’s election and before his second-term weaponization of ICE and attempt to inflict martial law upon American cities. It’s chilling that reality is now mirroring what Anderson, as he was writing the screenplay, must have thought was far-fetched.
From the get-go, Anderson paints the government forces as fascist and white supremacist. But he skewers the wacko far-left as well. One of the scenes with the revolutionaries is as funny as the Liberation Front/Splinter scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
Leonardo DiCaprio is a huge movie star who can carry a romantic drama (Titanic) or an action adventure (The Revenant) and, hell, play Jay Gatsby or Romeo. Here, his Bob shambles along, often terrified and klutzy, and none too strategic. It’s to DiCaprio’s credit that he turned down what became the righteous Jesse Plemons role in Killers of the Flower Moon to play a dumbass. And, again in One Battle After Another, he is racing for survival, always seemingly one step too slowly. It’s a fantastic, anti-Tom Cruise performance.
Penn’s Lockjaw is the most demented military character in the movies since Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) in Dr. Strangelove. As perverse and perverted as he is, you have to acknowledge his epic relentlessness. Penn is able to humanize the awful Lockjaw with his vulnerabilities – sexual and social-climbing yearnings that control him.
Chase Infiniti, in her first feature film, gives us a Willa with the latent ferocity of her mom, but with more grounding, discipline and self-awareness. More of Chase Inifiniti, please.
Teyana Taylor dominates the first chapter of One Battle After Another, with Perfidia’s stunning charisma and power. Benicio Del Toro and Regina King are excellent as two of Bob’s rescuers. Eric Schweig, an actor I’ve admired since The Last of the Mohicans (1992), shows up in a small but key role.
One Battle After Another has a Metacritic rating of 95. Although I’ve been singing its praises here, I initially found it a little too long for something so bombastic. Since then, I’ve thought about it more, and have placed it higher on my list of the Best Movies of 2025. Anyway, it’s so well-crafted and unusually outrageous that it’s a Must See.