One Battle After Another (2025)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Not being familiar with Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, and not knowing it serves as the basis for Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film, One Battle After Another, was probably a good thing for me. Pynchon lies beyond my preferred tastes in literature, so I might have cooled at the suggestion of a screening. My ass was in the seat for Leo DiCaprio and Benicio Del Toro, and Anderson, of course, though I was admittedly nervous after his most recent feature. Yet being brought to tears multiple times and feeling cerebrally affected by this story and its timeliness were not things I was prepared for.

Opening with a searing scene of violence and shockingly funny eroticism, Anderson pulls no punches in this film that seems to be reaching through the screen to grab audiences and shake them out of a stupor. Escapism? Not here, and to that end, I do think the marketing campaign for this title was especially effective. I had, truly, no idea what we were in for, and that Anderson chose a distinctly unsafe and wickedly fun route with a story that, as it unfolded, became insidiously upsetting should earn him laurels come awards season. Wryly skirting sentimentality, his saga of an extended family of choice with a twisted past reconnecting to save their next generation showcases human awkwardness and hopefulness in a way less like Anderson's pointing a mirror at us and more like he's giving us a pep talk after losing a game. He knows exactly who his audience is, and what they're tired from. Hint: it's in the title. 

"Fighting" and "attacks," as words, have been sapped of their strength in the age of social media, but Anderson reminds us of what it really means to dedicate yourself -- bodily -- to a cause you believe in. And not just because Warner Bros., despite their reported blanching at this film's extraordinary budget, trusted in their auteur to have creative control. Opening with a far-left militant group breaking out detained immigrants on the American southern border, including the aforementioned shockingly funny erotic scene, the story indeed shows us the physical toll one battle after another takes on the people desperately fighting for their obsessions.

The plot jumps sixteen years into the future -- though the exact temporal setting of this film is deliberately hard to pin -- after establishing its main characters, members of the revolutionist group the French 75, especially Bob (DiCaprio) and Perfidia (a riveting Teyana Taylor, in full command of her craft), who fall in love and have a daughter before they are separated and forced to live in hiding. Their nemesis? Steven J. Lockjaw, and honestly, just enjoy the names in this as you listen, they're great. Sean Penn delivers an astonishing performance as Lockjaw, the most evil presence on a screen I've seen in a long time, a military colonel and avowed white supremacist who develops a psychosexual monomania fixated on Perfidia. His reign of terror has rendered Bob debilitatingly paranoid, despite living a happy -- and very private -- life with his daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), a strong-willed and highly capable teenager. They've lived under false names and without communication with their former comrades, including Perfidia, but Lockjaw finds them.

Determined to track down any possible child he may have had -- to eliminate any evidence of his interracial sexual activities (and fetish) -- he has utilized mercenary bounty hunters to locate his quarry. After Willa's rescue by the French 75, and Lockjaw's attack on their house, a fleeing Bob frantically uses what resources are available to him through his secret network. But it's been years since he's remembered certain passwords, and suffice it to say that his is a significant and almost absurd journey, which functions as the main plot. Regina Hall and Benicio Del Toro perform brilliantly in their supporting roles, holding their own even as the screenplay zigs and zags and maintaining believable gravitas in moments so strange they need grounding. 

Indeed humorous throughout, the film nevertheless keeps a firm clutch on our attention for its two-and-a-half hours. Jonny Greenwood's score sets a haunting mood, one calculated to feel at times like aural anxiety, including a long sequence of rising tension with what sounds like a single piano key played endlessly. And right that it should! Our humanist attachment to these odd and exciting, dangerous characters comes from somewhere, and -- spoiler alert -- it's probably because of the significant threat against them. This film, despite blurring its own setting, wears its politics on its sleeve and flashes it around. Not necessarily about Antifa or MAGA or any recognizable labels like that, but in that its antagonists are institutionalized hypocrites, aspiring to and/or mobilized by a secret society of white supremacist men controlling the government. Timely themes abound, to be sure, in this work, but its characterizations of desperate men couldn't be more starkly painted.

One Battle After Another niggled my brain for some time after our screening, not least because of its curious tone. For a film of such scope and seriousness and urgency, this feels fun and even hopeful as it challenges and subverts our expectations. Like these characters, we're tired from so much fighting, but this film reminds us of the lasting power -- and empowerment -- of resistance. That freedom shouldn't come at a cost too great for us to conform to injustice. In retrospect, it seems Anderson changes the title's significance to reorient us from the past to the future: don't waste time fretting over old battles or counting your scars, you've gotta take stock and heal before the next battle. Onward and upward!