One Battle After Another Review: Paul Thomas Anderson's Fiercely Political Action-Comedy-Thriller Is The Best Movie Of 2025

Fiercely political, darkly funny, and brimming with exciting car chases and deafening shootouts, "One Battle After Another" is unlike anything Paul Thomas Anderson has made before. Hell, it's unlike anything any big studio has made in a long, long time. The fact that it exists in its current form — as a big budget event movie, with a big movie star in the lead — is kind of a modern movie miracle. Shot in VistaVision by Anderson and Michael Bauman, "One Battle After Another" conjures up imagery that is hauntingly modern — kids in cages playing with tin foil blankets, the border wall lit at night like some sort of alien monolith, cops in military-style riot gear beating back protestors in the streets — in stark, stunning fashion.

Anderson isn't pulling any punches here, nor is he preaching. He's instead crafting the type of movie that might've existed more comfortably back in the late 1960s or early 1970s, when studios took a chance on letting filmmakers run wild with personal expression before the blockbuster took over and box office returns became the bottom line. Will this type of movie play with a modern audience grown so accustomed to spoon-fed homogenized slop? I don't know, and that's really not my concern. All I know is that "One Battle After Another" is the best movie of the year.

Very loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon's novel "Vineland" (in press notes, Anderson says he "stole the parts [of the book] that really resonated" with him, with Pynchon's blessing), "One Battle" is about revolutionaries who have watched time slip through their fingers like so much water. The promise of the future has only been stomped further into the dirt. "Everybody knows the war is over, everybody knows the good guys lost," to quote a Leonard Cohen song. One of those revolutionaries finds himself stoned out of his mind and watching movies about more successful revolutionaries from the '60s. What would happen if something suddenly shook him out of his stupor?

One of the most interesting things about "One Battle After Another" is how Anderson paints a portrait of a world both hopelessly dark and absurdly hilarious. Then again, that's also the world we currently live in. A prevailing sense of certain death and inescapable oppression hangs over everything, and yet, the film somehow manages to be light and laugh-out-loud funny on multiple occasions. Just one example: Anderson establishes that a seemingly all-powerful white supremacist cult is more or less running the country behind the scenes. Pretty dark and ominous! But they hilariously call themselves the Christmas Adventurers Club, and when they gather for meetings, they loudly proclaim "Hail Saint Nick!"

As "One Battle" begins, we meet explosives expert Pat (Leonardo DiCaprio), who works with an underground revolutionary gang known as the French 75. Pat is crazy about fellow revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills, played with an almost frightening intensity by Teyana Taylor, and the two of them engage in several acts of domestic terrorism all in the name of bringing down a corrupt system. Perfidia also catches the eye of Col. Steven J. Lockjaw, a racist military man who turns this fiery Black woman into a kind of fetishistic object of lust and deranged desire. As played by an alarmingly ripped and tanned Sean Penn, Lockjaw is one of the most memorable movie villains in a long time — a tightly-coiled bundle of self-loathing, nervous energy, and self-righteousness. He operates like some sort of lizard, moving entirely out of instinct and self-survival. There's not a single redeeming quality to the character, and Penn has never been more detestable (on screen, at least) than he is here.

Things come to a head when Perfidia becomes pregnant and gives birth to a daughter. At first, she attempts to start a family with Pat and her new child, but while Pat clearly loves and cherishes the baby, Perfidia feels jealous of the infant and seemingly has no desire to be a mother. After a bank robbery goes very, very wrong, the members of the French 75 scatter to the wind, with Perfidia vanishing and Pat assuming the new identity of Bob Ferguson and taking his daughter, Willa, with him.

This entire opening salvo of "One Battle After Another" unfolds with a twitchy, electric energy that had me squirming in my seat, aided by Jonny Greenwood's clangy musical score. Everything in these opening set-up scenes feels incredibly off-kilter, borderline feverish. Anderson punctuates it with a car chase sequence that's thrilling and only a taste of what's to come — like "Mad Max: Fury Road" "One Battle" eventually becomes a feature-length chase scene, never letting up, breezing through its 162 minute runtime in the blink of an eye.

After this opening, "One Battle" jumps forward 16 years. Willa is now a teenager, played by newcomer Chase Infiniti, who is something of a revelation here. Willa will spend a huge chunk of the film in peril, which means Infiniti has to play the part in a near-constant state of panic and confusion. This is no easy feat, and yet she does it with such a natural grace that it's remarkable, as are later moments when Willa starts to fight back.

As for Bob, he's the very definition of a burnout. DiCaprio is always great when he gets to be funny in a sad, pathetic way (see: "The Wolf of Wall Street" and "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"), and he plays Bob as a guy who once fought the good fight but who now can't remember where the hell he is half the time. DiCaprio is consistently hilarious here, bumbling around in a bathrobe and looking believably baked. He spends his days smoking pot and getting day-drunk, which turns out to be a big problem when Lockjaw comes back into his life and turns everything upside down, putting Willa in serious danger.

Bob suddenly has to turn to his old underground revolutionary network for help, but his brain is so fried he can't remember the secret passwords required to get the ball rolling. Thankfully, he has help from karate instructor Sergio, played by a scene-stealing, effortlessly cool Benicio del Toro. Sergio has his own underground secrets, and he's happy to help Bob out if it means sticking it to the fascist government that sends fake protesters in to rile up violence in the streets.

As a director, Anderson is a modern master, and I've liked or loved virtually all his films to date (the only title I don't have much of a fondness for is his debut, "Hard Eight," aka "Sydney"). He is a director clearly influenced by filmmakers he grew up watching — Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese in particular. He creates challenging, adult-driven films that feel almost at odds with everything else currently at the multiplex, a fact that has become even more true as the modern Hollywood output has grown increasingly dire and uninspired. With "One Battle After Another," he has done something truly stunning. I don't quite know if I'd declare this Anderson's best film, but he's taken an incredibly big swing here, managing to craft a movie that is unapologetically political while also being a wild and crazy crowd-pleaser. Those two things feel like they should be at odds with each other, and yet Anderson finds a way to make it all work smoothly.

"One Battle After Another" does not shy away from the idea that the United States Government has become oppressive and totalitarian. It is not afraid to suggest that sometimes, political violence might be warranted, especially when seemingly all other recourse has failed. Anderson's script is suggesting dark, unstoppable forces are forever pulling the strings behind-the-scenes at all times. This film frequently feels like a powder keg ready to go off.

And yet, Anderson also keeps the film consistently fun and funny. Nearly everything DiCaprio is doing here is hilarious — a lengthy sequence where he bickers with a fellow revolutionary on the phone keeps building and building, growing funnier by the second. Then there are the action scenes. I don't think anyone would classify Anderson as an action filmmaker, but "One Battle After Another" is propulsive, loaded with shootouts and a lengthy car chase finale that's so intense and exciting that I felt like I was going to get out of my seat and start pacing around the theater to calm the hell down. Are you even allowed to make movies like this anymore, on this sort of grand scale? I don't know, but Paul Thomas Anderson has done it. Viva la revolución.

/Film Rating: 10 out of 10

"One Battle After Another" opens in theaters on September 26, 2025.