One Battle After Another (2025)

4 Stars (out of 4)

Clench Revolution

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson's best movie in years, One Battle After Another has a ragged sprawl, stinging real-life parallels, and, best of all, great characters with punch-drunk love in their hearts.

Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) are revolutionaries and members of a group called The French 75. They break into an immigrant detention center and set the detainees free, and in the process, Perfidia publicly humiliates the evil Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn).

Lockjaw vows revenge, but is also attracted to Perfidia. He tracks her down and coerces her into another incident of consensual humiliation. Some time later, Perfidia has a baby daughter, and begins acting erratically, going so far as to shoot a guard during a bank robbery and getting caught. She turns over her fellow revolutionaries and disappears.

Sixteen years later, Bob is raising daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) alone, off the grid, and paranoid. He sits at home smoking pot and watching The Battle of Algiers on TV.

Attempting to join an elite, racist men's club — the Christmas Adventurers' Club — Lockjaw comes roaring back into Bob's life, abducting Willa. Bob enlists the aid of Willa's martial arts instructor, Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro), to get her back.

Taking a cue from his last movie Licorice Pizza, One Battle After Another forgoes the polished, stately look of some of Anderson's earlier works, and embraces a ratty, worn-out feel. It's closer to the style of Anderson's mentor, Robert Altman, and indeed, the movie could be a modern-day Nashville.

But, unlike Licorice Pizza, this one has a shape, and a center.

It begins with an incendiary, and scarily relevant, attack on a cruel immigrant detention center, but as the movie goes on (in a similar fashion to Anora), it strangely starts to become absurd… and hilarious. A good deal of this rests on DiCaprio's superb performance. He's like "The Dude" from The Big Lebowski in tenth gear.

A sequence in which Bob tries to get information from his former spy network that will help him find Willa — but he can't remember a secret code — is intense, an alternating mix of jolts and laughs. (It recalls one of Anderson's best scenes, the tense drug deal in Boogie Nights, complimented by snapping firecrackers.)

Benicio del Toro is a perfect comic partner for him, a wise, unhurried countenance complimenting DiCaprio's nervous whirlwind energy. Every performance from top to bottom is rich and detailed, Teyana Taylor being another notable standout.

Meanwhile, a chase scene in the third section is unlike anything you've ever seen, cars appearing and disappearing over undulating hills to the sounds of Jonny Greenwood's nervy, plunking piano on the soundtrack.

It's curious that the villains in One Battle After Another lean toward the cartoonish, but then again, racism combined with self-righteousness can't really be portrayed any other way.

This is a spellbinding ride — not once does the 161 minutes drag — but there's so much going on a second viewing may be necessary. Fortunately, it will also be a pleasure.