‘One Battle After Another’ Review – Easily One Of 2025’s Best Films

Paul Thomas Anderson has a knack for films about power, vice, and isolated protagonists. Boogie Nights centers the Wild West of the 1970’s pornography scene, with well-endowed stars fighting to maintain relevance against the perils of an often shady fledgling industry. There Will Be Blood was a masterful exploration capitalism run amok in the robber baron era of early American capitalism, as Daniel Day Lewis’ Daniel Plainview clashes with preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) in a battle between the powers of money and faith.

The Master follows disaffected WWII vet Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) as he falls into a growing Scientology-esque cult, a fateful meeting between an unwell, isolated man and a domineering fringe faith. Often complicated, frequently insightful, and always technical marvels, a new PTA film is always surprising and regularly delightful. One Battle After Another, loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, is an exceptional entry in the director’s complicated filmography, easily ranking amont the director’s best work yet.

In the film, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Bob Ferguson, the explosives expert of the far-left revolutionary group known as the French 75. A series of high-profile actions fuels his romance with leader Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), whose visible leadership draws the attention of Col. Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn). Perfidia initiates a sexual encounter with Lockjaw to get out of a jam, and nine months later she gives birth to baby Willa (with ambiguous parentage) in her makeshift radical family with Bob. The material tensions combined with a tightening legal noose (thanks to Lockjaw’s pressures) provoke Perfidia to rat on the group to secure her own freedom while Bob flees with Willa. Sixteen years later, checked-out father Bob lives off-the-grid with Willa (Chase Infiniti), when Lockjaw comes calling, and Bob has to go on a high-stakes adventure to save her from the racist military windbag’s grasp.

One Battle After Another? More Like ‘One Great Performance After Another’

DiCaprio has a stellar history across nearly every genre in film history, from romance (Titanic) to mob dramas (The Departed), sci-fi actioners (Inception) to direct-to-video horror comedies (Critters 3), but he’s never been funnier than in One Battle After Another. Anderson has found considerable success with comedy hybrids like the dramedy Licorice Pizza or the black comedy-stoner neo-noir Inherent Vice, but the material here allows DiCaprio to exercise the full range of his chops. A well-meaning, irresponsible stoner dad on the fringe, Bob undergoes an earnest, full-throttle pursuit of Willa that’s alternatingly hilarious (radical leftist skills notwithstanding, he’s not that good at it…), tense, and moving. In a career full of top-shelf portrayals of complicated characters, DiCaprio’s multifaceted work in Battle easily ranks among his best.

Chase Infinity is also incredible, with Battle serving as her second major project and first feature film. In her hands, Willa’s simply a normal girl (minus being raised by a paranoid revolutionary who trained her for various contingencies) thrown into wildly escalating conditions, and Infinity handles the wild narrative swings with a graceful skill and a memorable screen presence. Two other standouts that deserve explicit mention are Benicio del Toro, who excels as sensei/radical ally Sergio St. Carlos, an effective, sometimes subtly funny, and always calm activist who is entertaining in every scene he’s in. Sean Penn is equally effective as Col. Jockjaw, a conflicted white supremacist with high ambitions and a chilling layer of sociopathy that, like so many empowered sociopaths in our own era, he rationalizes to salvage his self-image. It’s an exemplary portrayal.

‘Battle’ Is Easily One Of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Best Films, And That Says A Lot

Anderson has always shown substantial skill in portraying fringe organizations and the complexities of power, and that’s exceptionally true here. The film doesn’t shy away from the French 75’s controversial actions. In portraying them as complicated humans rather than as ideological caricatures, he allows an empathetic window into characters who will come to find themselves facing the might of the U.S. government, but one clearly riddled with white supremacist corruption. Case in point is the secretive “Christmas Adventurers” group that Lockjaw joins, whose dictates on enforced racial purity come to cause a long chain of events that play an important role in why Bob’s so desperate to find Willa.

Battle has a little bit of everything: considerable comedy, political intrigue, high-stakes ticking-clock chases, action sequences, and deeply felt, moving drama. It balances them all well, and the story evolves relatively seamlessly through different tones while maintaining constant tension once the narrative gets going. At 170 minutes, the film is just shy of 3 hours, but it breezes by thanks to a tight script. There are perhaps one or two moments where it switches from one followed character to another, disrupting a carefully established tone momentarily, but with carefully crafted characters and a stellar set of performances, the disruptions don’t last long.

Altogether, Battles is easily one of the finest films this year, and it ranks highly among Anderson’s best. It’s politically incisive without being reductive or preachy, action-packed once it’s rolling, and punctuated by brilliant moments of comedy. DiCaprio, Infinity, Penn, and del Toro are exceptional throughout, and while the runtime is lengthy, it’s a tightly-woven set of narrative linkages that never feels long. With There Will Be Blood, Anderson stood out as a towering director at the peak of his filmmaking powers. One Battle After Another reveals that PTA never left that peak; he lives there now, and every now and then, he rains down a cinematic masterpiece if we’re lucky. As it turns out, at least in terms of cinematic offerings, this is a lucky year.

One Battle After Another premieres September 26, 2025.

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