One Battle After Another (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
Certificate: 15
Running Time: 162 mins
UK Distributor: Warner Bros
UK Release Date: 26 September 2025
WHO’S IN ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER?
Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti, Alana Haim, Wood Harris, Tony Goldwyn, Shayna McHayle, Starletta DuPois, D.W. Moffett, Paul Grimstad, Kevin Tighe
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Paul Thomas Anderson (director, writer, producer, cinematographer), Sara Murphy and Adam Somner (producers), Jonny Greenwood (composer), Michael Bauman (cinematographer), Andy Jurgensen (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
A former revolutionary (DiCaprio) comes out of hiding for a noble mission…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER?
If there’s one thing (out of many) you have to give Paul Thomas Anderson credit for, it’s that he never makes the same movie twice. You could put Boogie Nights next to Phantom Thread, or Punch-Drunk Love alongside The Master, or Licorice Pizza in line with There Will Be Blood, and while some may be similar in form and even themes, they are all so astoundingly different that sometimes you’ll even forget that they’re all by the same filmmaker.
With each film, be it a spawling ensemble flick wherein frogs randomly fall from the sky (that’d be Magnolia) or a 60s detective thriller where the main sleuth is a hardcore stoner (Inherent Vice, his weakest film to date) or even a simple story of an aging gangster trying to nurture a fellow gambler (his rather underrated debut feature Hard Eight), Anderson somehow manages to reinvent himself as someone who can adopt a wide variety of genres without losing sense of his unusual yet enthralling style. He really is one of the most versatile filmmakers in modern cinema, perhaps in all cinema, with such an eclectic filmography where, like snowflakes, no two are truly alike.
All of which makes One Battle After Another, Anderson’s tenth feature and by far his most expansive, even more fantastic than it already is. Not only is it once again wildly different to anything we’ve yet seen from him, but it shows an all-new side to the filmmaker as he tackles prominent, even frightening modern-day issues with a fierce and relentless energy that leaves you completely breathless, all on a studio-level scale that most other auteur filmmakers would kill each other over, Battle Royale-style. It’s a wild ride, one that only Anderson could take you on, and it’s nothing short of extraordinary as he reinvents himself once more as a filmmaker that can function on a level beyond what we already thought he was capable of.
An extremely loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, the film focuses on a group of freedom-fighters known as the French 75, specifically explosives expert Pat (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his pregnant lover Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), who enact a series of revolutionary counter-measures against what appears to be a police-state version of modern-day America. However, when things go south for Perfidia during one of their outings, the group goes into hiding, with Pat taking his and Perfidia’s newborn daughter Charlene to a secluded area where they rebrand themselves as Bob and Willa Ferguson respectively, with the latter (played as a teenager by Chase Infiniti) growing up under the roof of an increasingly paranoid and habitually pot-smoking Bob. Their father-daughter time doesn’t last long, though, as ruthless military figure and the French 75’s former nemesis Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) begins tracking down and capturing the remaining members during a personal mission, forcing Bob on the run to protect Willa at all costs.
This is an incredibly structured narrative, for despite its lengthy runtime there’s not a single moment where you feel as though any scene could be trimmed or cut out entirely, as Anderson presents the perfect amount of information you need to know about these characters and the world they operate in to completely understand what they are all about, without going into more detail than necessary. You barely even feel the length, since Anderson paces it at a rapid speed with Jonny Greenwood’s bouncy score constantly keeping you on edge, while the director (also a co-cinematographer with Michael Bauman) employs a harmonious set of camera tricks like one-shot sprints through apartments and tight close-ups on characters’ faces as they burn red from pure frustration, to capture the never-ending turmoil of the situation. There is striking filmmaking at every turn, especially in certain chase sequences where giant dips in the road carry a similar intensity to a jump-scare horror, all within crisp VistaVision imagery that despite the 21st century aesthetic could easily pass as something made during the prosperous New Hollywood era.
Creating and presenting an intense atmosphere is one thing, but getting the viewer to care about any of it is another thing entirely, and Anderson utilises both a stellar cast and his underappreciated storytelling strength of character connectivity to inject heart, humour and complexity to his narrative. As in past films like Boogie Nights and Magnolia, and to a lesser extent Inherent Vice (also based on a Pynchon novel), Anderson gifts each member of his ensemble, even those who aren’t on screen for very long, with roles that prove integral to the wider plot, further enriching a world that could otherwise feel too far removed from reality. Whether it’s various other members of the French 75 like Regina Hall in a rare non-comedic turn, which she incidentally excels at, or Benicio del Toro as a laid-back karate sensei who helps DiCaprio’s Bob out, or some of the more out-there additions like a convent of militaristic nuns and a gang of powerful white supremacists who worship Santa Claus (I’m genuinely surprised that Anderson doesn’t call them “white Christmas supremacists” in a film that’s already filled with cracking dialogue), you always get a sense of who these people are and how they all fit into this madcap scenario, in ways that ensure they remain memorable long after they’ve left.
Every single actor gives so much depth and personality to their parts that they end up delivering performances that are among their most impressive in years. DiCaprio, the gifted comedic performer that he is, turns what could have been a fairly one-note protagonist into a rambling scatterbrain whose heavy marijuana use hilariously fogs what should be a clear mind, yet his moral crusade as a concerned father grounds him and gives him the humanity he needs to remain pleasant to watch. Contrarily, and to arguably more impressive results, Penn is playing an absolute monster who is not just physically intimidating (with blonde hair, veiny muscles and a stilted walk that make him look like if Popeye listened exclusively to Andrew Tate podcasts) but has such a menacing presence that you never know what he’s about to do, yet underneath is a much more pathetic excuse of a man whose yearning for acceptance and connection, even among out-and-proud racists, drives him to commit deeply concerning acts that would earn them a one-way ticket to hell. Then you have utter firecrackers like Teyana Taylor and especially Chase Infiniti who take characters that so easily could be written without anywhere near as many dimensions as their male counterparts and transform them into competent, complex and compassionate characters that say so much with so little dialogue or even screentime.
The real standout of One Battle After Another, though, is its unflinching and uncompromising vision of a world that is scarily not very far removed from our own. Anderson never mentions any particular politicians or political parties by name, but it’s clear whose America we’re watching (or at least, this universe’s equivalent to them) with migrant internment camps where refugees and even children are caged up like zoo animals, street protests that are infiltrated and squashed by government-backed militants, and those in power submitting cult-like devotion to extremely archaic and prejudiced worldviews. It’s all done in a way where it doesn’t constantly whack you over the head with what it’s trying to say or who it’s targeting, nor does it grandstand with empty buzzwords and strawman arguments that only poke bigger holes into its own argument. Take notes, Ari Aster: THIS is how you do a politically-charged takedown of modern-day America, and not what you were trying to do with Eddington.
It’s hard to imagine another major studio-backed movie coming along this year, maybe even this decade, that will be any more proficient, profound or damning toward our present-day society as One Battle After Another is. But more importantly, it’s perhaps the defining movie of Paul Thomas Anderson’s ever-changing career, one that encapsulates everything that he does so well within the art of filmmaking but also takes it all to a whole new level that could well place him among the very best to do it. For now, he can settle for this being the best movie (thus far) of the year, and his most radical self-reinvention to date. Let’s hope the next one maintains this much passion.
SO, TO SUM UP…
One Battle After Another is the defining movie of both the first quarter of the 21st century and of Paul Thomas Anderson’s career, as the filmmaker encapsulates a scarily relevant politically-charged atmosphere with stellar filmmaking, air-tight storytelling and complex characters played by a magnificent ensemble, all of which form a film that will be talked about for decades to come.
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