An urgent, powder-kegged call to arms, a rollickingly comic spectacle, a soulful meditation on the sins of our past, and a moving examination of the trials of fatherhood, writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, “One Battle After Another,” contains multitudes. A sprawling epic about an aging, stoner revolutionary, his determined daughter, and the dogged nemesis who resurfaces to enact decades-old revenge, the film is Anderson’s most ambitious to date. Packed with grand set pieces but never losing sight of the tender father/daughter story at its heart, it is 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. Not to mention, one of the best of the year.
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A drama rooted in revolt, “One Battle After Another” is inherently political but refuses to be defined solely by its ideologies. Instead, Anderson makes the story personal above all, even as it engages with leftist activists, authoritarian tyranny, and the forces pushing back against fascism. The film begins with a blazing, insurgent first act of defiance and consequence—Anderson’s most visceral, charged work to date, teeming with kinetic car and foot chases, bursts of violence, and a fiery determination to mend injustices. Bob Ferguson, once dubbed “Ghetto Pat” or “Rocketman” (Leonardo DiCaprio), joins militant radical Perfidia Beverly Hills (a scorching Teyana Taylor) and the French 75 collective—Deandra (Regina Hall), Laredo (Wood Harris), and Mae West (Alana Haim). When they free incarcerated immigrants from detention centers in a scene that feels unnervingly timely, they incur the wrath of commanding officer Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), who becomes perilously obsessed with Perfidia—romantically and sexually—as much as he is politically opposed to her, contradictions that Penn plays as a wicked joy of right-wing self-loathing.
The birth of Bob and Perfidia’s daughter, Willa, transforms the stakes. Sixteen years later, Willa (Chase Infiniti, in a startlingly confident debut) is a restless teenager drawn to karate and her circle of friends, while Bob has spiraled into paranoia, trying to raise her in exile under false identities. Meanwhile, Lockjaw has aligned himself with the Christmas Adventurers—a clandestine white supremacist order featuring Tony Goldwyn, John Hoogenakker, and Kevin Tighe—yet never releases his grip on the past. His vendetta culminates in a siege on Baktan Cross, the countercultural Northern California town sympathetic to ‘60s survivors and revolutionaries. There, Bob, aided by Sensei Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro, a sea of amusing serenity amid DiCaprio’s chaos), and remnants of the French 75 rally to protect Willa from Lockjaw’s tightening, laser-focused snare.
This is only a fragment of Anderson’s boundless and unpredictable narrative. The film ricochets between modes—an opening charged with fire and resistance, sharp comedy that bubbles with absurdity, bursts of danger that unsettle, and moments of striking poignancy. Like Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland,” which loosely inspires it, “One Battle After Another” acknowledges America’s fractured sociopolitical fabric but remains a story of people, not polemics. The sweep is archetypal—original sin, exile, menace, redemption—yet Anderson resists convention at every turn. And not for nuthin’, the movie features the most tense and yet surreal car chases ever committed to screen in the third act, as if PTA channeled his inner hypnotic David Lynch.
The cast is uniformly excellent. DiCaprio serves as the film’s anchor, wringing both hilarity and angst from his performance with committed precision (and one that’s vaguely Lebowskian too). Taylor burns with conviction, Hall brings warmth and sharp edges, and Del Toro embodies balance and wisdom. But it is Penn who emerges as the film’s most startling force. His Lockjaw is grotesque and riveting, a performance that veers between menace and absurdity. A racist ideologue undone by his obsession with Perfidia, he is both monstrous and darkly comic—a creation as unforgettable as it is unhinged.
Visually, the film soars. Michael Bauman’s VistaVision cinematography is sweeping yet incisive, alternately grand and piercingly intimate. Jonny Greenwood’s haunting score is as unconventional as ever, brimming with jagged textures, but swells into moments of orchestral power when the story demands it. The film is a storm of controlled chaos, yet Anderson orchestrates every movement with clarity.
And while its political dimension may invite distortion or misreading in bad-faith arenas, at its core, “One Battle After Another” is a father-daughter story—of a man haunted by the past yet striving to live in the present, finally stepping up and hoping to prepare the next generation to learn from history’s mistakes. It’s also about the reckoning between the person you are, the person you awaken to in your complacent stoner haze, and the parent you hope to be—and how the self you imagine doesn’t always align with the father you long to become.
From one generation to the next, the struggle endures. Fierce and unrelenting, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” burns as both an incendiary action epic and a tender family drama, alive with humor, conviction, and revolutionary spirit. And amid all its pandemonium, Sergio’s reminder that “freedom is no fear” lingers as the film’s quiet truth, a mantra passed down like a torch. Few films this year feel so vital, so breathtaking in scope and soul. Viva la revolución, indeed. [A]
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.
