Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson (“Boogie Nights,” “There Will Be Blood”) making an action film sounded impossible until it wasn’t. Early whispers about “One Battle After Another” raised eyebrows—what would a PTA car chase even look like?—but the result is a full-throttle epic that, as our review noted, plays like “a long, spiraling thrill ride—an action adventure, a soulful family drama, and, remarkably for its expansive two-hour and fifty-minute runtime, one of Anderson’s most accessible films.” At its center are performers just as fearless: Teyana Taylor, the musician, dancer, and actor who broke out in “A Thousand and One,” scorches as militant radical Perfidia Beverly Hills; Regina Hall, the veteran star of “Girls Trip” and “Support the Girls,” brings sharpness and warmth to Deandra, a key member of the French 75 collective; and Chase Infiniti, a complete newcomer making an astonishingly confident debut as Willa, Bob Ferguson’s teenage daughter whose abduction drives the film’s stakes.
Set across decades, the film follows Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), once a fiery revolutionary now adrift in paranoia, who tries to raise his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) in exile under false identities. When his past catches up with him, he reluctantly teams with Sensei Sergio (Benicio del Toro) to protect her from Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), a vengeful ideologue aligned with a white supremacist order. Along the way, they reconnect with Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), Deandra (Regina Hall), Laredo (Wood Harris), and Mae West (Alana Haim) of the French 75 collective. The ensemble also features Tony Goldwyn, John Hoogenakker, and Kevin Tighe, rounding out Anderson’s most ambitious canvas yet.
“I’ve worked a lot before, but I never worked with Paul Thomas Anderson. It’s a brand new experience, man,” Hall said. “And he is something else to watch in action. It’s as incredible to watch this movie for us as it is for you. You may be doing it, but you don’t know what those shots are gonna look like. The score, the editing, the pacing—it’s so grand. Everyone was like, Paul Thomas Anderson’s making an action film? What’s that gonna look like? And then he’s like, watch this. To see him take on another genre, combine it with comedy, combine it with action—he took everything, put it on the table, and then you get ‘One Battle After Another.’”
Taylor said she knew immediately she was stepping into something singular. “He’s just a chef. He’s a master chef. And you know, when you let him cook, this is the outcome. Everything is perfect. The plating is perfect, the food is perfect, the seasoning is perfect. It is the perfect meal. And it makes you feel so full, so soulful.”
For Infiniti, whose character Willa is pulled between adolescence and survival, the set was both terrifying and electrifying. “Paul’s set is the ultimate master class, especially for me, this being my first one. I was trying to absorb everything I could. And I had great people to look up to and just observe. I was just trying my best to live in the moment and do justice by myself and justice by the story and make Paul proud and not get in my own way, but also making sure that I was holding my own in those scenes, just so I could be a great scene partner to everybody.”
Hall singled out the audacity of Anderson’s action sequences. “When I first saw it, I thought, ‘Do I have 3D glasses on and I’m not aware of it?’ By the time I saw it with the sound, I was riveted. Paul took three cars, one of them busted, one lane, and he made a car chase out of it. There wasn’t even a zigzag moment in it. And I was riveted. That, for me, was pretty like, whoa.”
Taylor’s favorite moments came from watching DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson flail through humiliation. “One of my favorites is Leo getting so irritated, it takes me out. It’s a two-part because it’s the one where he’s outside on the pay phone, and then when he’s at Benicio’s house, and he’s on that phone. It takes me out every single time—him falling, getting tased, getting kicked out of the car, getting thrown from the car. Even crying at school. Seeing Leo in his element, the range—from being a fan to sharing the same space with him—it was a delight.”
Infiniti, meanwhile, highlighted the unlikely chemistry at the film’s core. “That whole scene when Leo and Benicio first come together on camera, and then you see him go to Benicio’s house—the calmness, but the point execution that Benicio has as Sensei compared to Bob’s chaos—is hilarious. The two of them together are so great.”
Anderson’s audacity—turning busted cars into riveting spectacle, pairing veterans with first-timers, and letting slapstick brush up against insurgent politics—wasn’t just a surprise to audiences but to the cast themselves. “You don’t know what those shots are gonna look like until you see them,” Hall admitted. “And then you realize Paul has taken comedy, action, politics, and family, and somehow made it one movie. And that’s what’s so incredible.”
“One Battle After Another” opens Friday, September 26, via Warner Bros.
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
