Paul Thomas Anderson has always been an ambitious filmmaker, and over the course of the last 30 years and 10 features, he’s amassed a filmography that could go toe-to-toe with pretty much any filmmaker. Before he was even 30, he had made Boogie Nights and the Robert Altman-homaging Magnolia. He’s one of the few filmmakers who has worked with Daniel Day-Lewis multiple times, and he was the first one to show us Adam Sandler had legitimate acting chops. He’s made new American classics like There Will Be Blood, taken on Scientology, adapted Thomas Pynchon, and revamped the coming-of-age story. And he still finds the time to direct music videos for Haim or make a short musical for Thom Yorke.
At this point, PTA has basically proven that he can do anything, but still finds a way to surprise his audiences with every new release. And maybe most importantly, he makes it all look so easy. With his 10th film, One Battle After Another, Anderson makes his grandest project yet, and it’s the type of movie that, while watching, feels like a new masterpiece unfolding. Once again, One Battle After Another sees PTA doing something new for him, while still managing to be a film that highlights everything that has made him so great since the mid-90s. It’s an incredible work that will likely go down as one of the important pieces of art for our troubling times.
What Is ‘One Battle After Another’ About?
In the opening moments of One Battle After Another, we follow a group of radical revolutionaries known as the French 75, who are planning to rescue a large number of immigrants captured at the US-Mexico border. Primary of these revolutionaries is Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), a badass ready for change, who is also is in a relationship with the group’s explosions guy, Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio). While they release those captured, Perfidia runs into Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), who she lords her influence over and immediately transfixes, with him promising he’ll be seeing her soon.
French 75 continues to escalate its acts of revolution, and Lockjaw’s obsession with Perfidia increases. To make matters worse, Bob and Perfidia have just had a child, Willa. As the heat turns up on the group and members start to get taken out or captured, Bob is left on the run to raise Willa by himself. Sixteen years later, Bob and Willa (Chase Infiniti) are living a relatively low-key life in California, where Bob drinks his nights away and smokes weed incessantly. Yet after all these years, Lockjaw is now hunting down Bob and Willa, and the last remaining revolutionaries, including Bob’s former French 75 comrade, Deandra (Regina Hall), fight to stay alive and evade Lockjaw’s terrifying grasp.
In just under three hours, Anderson creates a captivating action film, an incredibly timely look at how people in power can utilize their position for manipulation and personal gain, an extremely funny comedy, and maybe his most personal exploration of a father and daughter relationship — all in one of the most beautifully shot and well-acted films of the year. It’s also fascinating to watch Anderson working at this scale, with his largest budget yet, and absolutely nail every aspect of this film. It’s the type of movie where you can see how everything PTA has made up until now has helped him get to this level, from the weed-infused mystery of Inherent Vice to the increasingly intense humor of Punch-Drunk Love to the magnificent scope of There Will Be Blood. Anderson has steadily honed the talents capable of making a film this grand and impressive.
Paul Thomas Anderson Embraces Action, and He’s Great At It
Quite possibly the biggest shock here is that Anderson fully attempts an action film for the first time, and, no surprise, he excels at that too. Yet it’s always right in line with Anderson’s style and what you would imagine a “PTA action film” would be like. For example, in one tremendous sequence, Bob has enlisted the help of Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro), Willia’s sensei, to get him out of town. While this is happening, Carlos is trying to ensure that the immigrants he’s keeping hidden remain out of reach, all while Lockjaw leads the military in the streets against a group of protestors.
Anderson and editor Andy Jurgensen (Licorice Pizza, Junun) deftly go back and forth between every perspective of this sequence, and in doing so, show everything that makes this film so awe-inspiring. Bob’s high antics are hilarious, Lockjaw is showing his ability to destroy lives and cause distractions in his own quest for power, while we watch Carlos attempting to keep innocent people safe from harm’s way, and the lengths he has to go to in order to achieve that. It’s a stunning masterclass that’s also ridiculously enjoyable.
In another brilliant scene, Anderson shows what his version of a car chase sequence is near the end of the film. It’s not flashy by any stretch of the imagination, but it is deeply exhilarating to watch play out. Without spoiling where this goes, the majority of this sequence is simply watching a few cars driving over empty road, looking and searching for others, but the way Anderson directs these moments leaves you on the edge of your seat. Anderson finds a way to shoot empty roads and make it compelling.
One Battle After Another is continuously propulsive in how Anderson tells his story, which he wrote and is based on Pynchon’s novel Vineland. But Anderson has assembled a team in which each person is expertly chosen to bring this story to life. The cinematography by Michael Bauman, who also shot Licorice Pizza, is warm when we follow Bob, but almost cold and formal when we’re with Lockjaw. Especially in the latter sequences, this warmth gives One Battle After Another a neo-Western vibe to it, which fits perfectly with this story. PTA’s frequent collaborator, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, as always, completely overwhelms with his score. The use of strings held over an extended period of time sounds as though they could split at any second as the tension rises, and heightens pretty much every moment in the film. Greenwood’s score is nearly omnipresent throughout the almost three hours, but it’s never oppressive and always necessary in setting the tone.
PTA Has One of His Best Casts Yet in ‘One Battle After Another’ — And That’s Saying Something
Anderson is no stranger to great casts, but One Battle After Another could possibly be his best, with every major player in this story deserving Oscar consideration. DiCaprio is quite often the heart and humor of this film, and he’s excellent at both. As the consistently inebriated Bob, getting high while watching The Battle of Algiers, DiCaprio is like if Larry “Doc” Sportello from Inherent Vice was thrown into an action film, and the result is about as bumbling and shaky as that sounds. He’s been out of the revolutionary world for almost two decades, and it shows, as he fumbles with code words and weapons, and isn’t able to keep up with the younger crowd.
But DiCaprio brings a very real pathos to this situation, as at his core, Bob is a man who has made his life about protecting his daughter, and now, he really needs to step up. In recent years, DiCaprio has proven he is brilliant with comedy, from The Wolf of Wall Street to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and his performance in One Battle After Another certainly deserves to be among those ranks.
Penn is also giving one of his best performances as Lockjaw, an insecure militant hypocrite who has to clean up his past mistakes. Penn plays Lockjaw as though he’s extremely confident to those who outrank him, yet he always seems like he’s ready to burst when put in these situations. He’s a character that will put power over everything else, and he’s emblematic of the way people in high positions can reign in terror by their own ludicrous means. It’s probably not by coincidence either that Penn’s mannerisms as Lockjaw often mimic those of RFK Jr. It’s a terrifying, unrelenting performance that manages to make Lockjaw weak at his core.
Teyana Taylor as Perfidia is a powerhouse here, showcasing a similar assuredness that she brought to the vastly underrated A Thousand and One. She knows how to twist a situation in her favor, yet with revolutionary instincts in her blood, she’s completely unpredictable. This is a fantastic presentation of what makes Taylor so great. Continuing his trend of being a commanding comedic presence is Benicio del Toro, who is wonderful as an aid to Bob. Whereas Bob is usually out of his element, Sergio is always completely in control of the madness around him. While she isn’t given quite enough to do, Regina Hall leaves her impact in Deandra’s key scenes, showing both her power and her empathy for Willa, who wasn’t asked to be thrown into this world.
Speaking of which, Chase Infiniti, in her debut feature film role, is remarkable here. Following her superb supporting role in Apple TV+’s Presume Innocent, this is a major performance for a first film, and Infiniti nails it at every turn. From being a guardian to Bob and his bad decisions to reckoning with the insane situation she’s been thrown into, we can see how being born of two revolutionaries has made her a strong individual, ready to rise to action when she needs to. Much like Bob, Willa is key to the heart of this film, and she’s essential to the emotional moments that creep out of nowhere and take you by surprise. Through Willa, it’s as though PTA is showcasing his own love for being a parent, stating that our generation might not get things right, but there is hope to be found in the next one.
Anderson has executed an unbelievably rare feat: a big-budget studio action film that maintains his specific tone and style, with a film that feels essential to our troubled modern times. One Battle After Another is the type of film that only comes along a few times a generation, a masterfully crafted work that speaks to our present as a defining work of what it was like to live in our present era. Anderson does that with humor, tension, fear, and care, in a film that’s both one of both the director’s and 2025’s best.
One Battle After Another comes to theaters on September 26.
- Release Date
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September 26, 2025
- Runtime
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160 minutes
- Director
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Paul Thomas Anderson
- Writers
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Paul Thomas Anderson, Thomas Pynchon
- Producers
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Adam Somner
- Paul Thomas Anderson proves in every scene what makes him one of our best filmmakers working today.
- Leonardo DiCaprio, Chase Infiniti, Sean Penn, and the entire cast is phenomenal.
- Anderson’s script is hilarious, terrifying, and timely in equal measure.
- Jonny Greenwood’s score is haunting and unrelentingly powerful.
