One Battle After Another ★★★★

Released: 26 September 2025

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti, Sean Penn, Regina Hall, Benicio Del Toro

Paul Thomas Anderson’s chameleonic, seismic, American frenetic fantasia is as gorgeously hypnotic as it is emotionally distant. A work about so much, that it counterintuitively scatters the spectator amongst all of its gorgeously conducted, propulsive political grandeur, leaving a small but essential hole at its core. Meticulously helmed by a true American great, whose oeuvre speaks for itself, and an ensemble of tremendous players, shot on an alchemical format and accompanied by arguably the greatest contemporary composer, should be a potion for cinematic ascension — and to some extent it is.

The French 75, an irresistible posse of American-Left revolutionists hold unanimous hope of a united America, storm military compounds, migrant and refugee camps, and banks with the intent of fighting back against white supremacy, America’s military complex and a whole load of gun-running, jacked-up “nationals”. Fire meets fire, both sides shoot first and in the middle of it all we meet the innately-caring Bob, played beautifully by Leonardo DiCaprio, an outsider whose primary instincts are of good. He falls in love with one of the French 75s Leaders in Perfidia, amped-up by a dynamic and terrific Teyana Taylor, and the two start a family together. Perfidia births the protean Willa Ferguson, performed dazzlingly by Chase Infiniti, whose energy oozes through the celluloid.

The base ideologies around family clashes with Perfidia, who leaves Bob with Willa to continue acting out her revolutionary destiny. Eventually she is caught by the soul-sucking, sadist Colonel Steven “Lockjaw” whose malice and exterminatory mindset echoes the contemporary American landscape. Lockjaw, embodied by a swashbuckling, rageful Sean Penn is one of the film’s many antagonists, swaying and stomping on anything or anyone that gets in his path. It is within these immensely detailed and gorgeously performed characters that Anderson’s fatal flaw is exposed. Aside from the clear insinuations to the hostile and insidious contemporary American climate, we never really get to dig any deeper than surface level to each of these marvellous protagonists. Paul Thomas Anderson’s filmography is consumed in intricate character studies, offset by power dynamics, sex and infatuation. This introspection is somewhat lacking in One Battle After Another’s immense sense of spectacle and storytelling. Knowing Anderson’s work, this may be with total intent, but on a first viewing it appears to lose itself slightly.

Within one of the work’s most monumental sequences, a tableaux of American dysfunction, a stand-out Benicio Del Toro, otherwise known as “Sensei”, attempts to support Bob in finding the coordinates to the safe house where his daughter Willa is being kept safe. Greenwood’s immense, fluid score borders on hysteria, whilst Anderson’s photography is as kinetic as it has ever been, driving us through the localised madness of what a citizen calls “World War Three”. The balance between outrageous humour and deafening peril is impenetrable — Anderson interweaves and riffs on the outlandish humour of Inherent Vice, Punch-Drunk Love and Phantom Thread and in the same breath injects the terrifying menace of the American Man from There Will Be Blood. It is quite an honour to witness a director at the height of their formal and narrative powers inject new life and experimentation into their work.

The film’s final sentiment is a beautiful one, despite the carnage and chaos of its previous two-hour thirty runtime. Shooting on VistaVision gives the narrative diegesis even more of a tremendous sense of scale. When blown up to 70mm IMAX, Anderson’s work is typically overwhelming. It is with no doubt that all of Paul Thomas Anderson’s filmic works are essential, and in the case of One Battle After Another this feeling is still true, it just must be said that there just needs some more introspection into its beating heart on a first-viewing.