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R
for pervasive language, violence, sexual content, and drug use.
Starring
Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio Del Toro, Teyana Taylor, Sean Penn, Regina Hall
Director
Paul Thomas Anderson
Producer
Paul Thomas Anderson, Sara Mur
Genres
Action/Adventure
Comedy
Released by
Warner Bros. on
9/26/2025
Nationwide
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Trailer
Review
For his tenth feature film, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson once again reinvents himself. A filmmaker who has consistently resisted pigeonholing with projects as diverse in tone and content as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Phantom Thread, Anderson shifts gears yet again with One Battle After Another, a quasi-satirical thriller loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland. Although the connections to the book are primarily thematic, Anderson has at last realized his long-held aspiration of bringing some version of Vineland to the screen.
This is arguably Anderson's best film since Magnolia, a narrative that lampoons extremism on both ends of the spectrum while maintaining a strong emotional core in the father-daughter relationship between paranoid stoner Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his sixteen-year-old daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), who only wants to be a normal teenager. The thriller elements-most notably an incredibly tense, climactic twenty-minute sequence-kept me on the edge of my seat.
The film lacks a clear period anchor. Although a thirty-minute prologue unfolds sixteen years before the main story, the only strong clue to its setting comes from the appearance of modern cell phones. Despite taking place closer to the present day, the ideology of the domestic terrorist group "French 75" feels as though it has been lifted directly from the radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s. For the most part, Anderson sidesteps references that would firmly situate One Battle After Another in a specific era. And while the film is filled with political undertones and unmistakable allegorical elements, it remains strikingly even-handed in its satirical treatment of both the far left (embodied by French 75) and the far right (represented by a white supremacist group with the ironically innocuous name "Christmas Adventurers").
The prologue introduces us to members of French 75, including firebrand Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) and her lover, the laid-back bomb-maker Bob, who seems more along for the ride than committed to the cause. The group is engaged in an ongoing war with a government faction led by Col. Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), an unhinged racist who is sexually obsessed with Perfidia. When she gives birth to a baby girl, priorities shift. Bob insists that they are a family now and should embrace the responsibilities that come with it. Perfidia, however, shows little interest in motherhood and instead doubles down on the resistance-a decision she ultimately regrets, as it forces her to betray her comrades and abandon both Bob and their daughter.
Years later, Bob is a shell of his former self: a paranoid man doing his best to raise his daughter, Willa, while living in hiding. Willa chafes under his restrictions-meant to protect her-and has grown up believing that the mother she never met died a hero. To French 75, Bob is still revered, but Perfidia is remembered as perfidious. The government mostly leaves Bob alone until Lockjaw reemerges. Promised a plum position within a shadowy white-power organization made up of major political players, Lockjaw must scrub his past of any trace of sexual impropriety with Perfidia-which means eliminating Bob and Willa, whether by imprisonment or by death. When all hell breaks loose, Bob finds his circle of allies shockingly small-limited to old friend Deandra (Regina Hall) and Willa's sensei, Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro)-while the forces arrayed against him are overwhelming.
If there's a criticism to be made of One Battle After Another, it concerns its uneven pacing. Although the film is mostly constructed like a runaway train, there are moments when it lurches to a halt, pursuing tangents that linger a little too long. Momentum shifts are especially noticeable in the middle section, but everything kicks back into high gear as the story races-quite literally-toward the finish line.
The climax is a masterclass in filmmaking, with Anderson using nonverbal performances (particularly from DiCaprio, Penn, and Infiniti), precise shot selection, layered sound design, and Jonny Greenwood's discordant score to craft a sequence I won't soon forget. Despite his satirical flourishes, Anderson's commitment to character-building is strong enough that we remain deeply invested, adding an emotional dimension to the spectacle as the film barrels toward its final confrontations.
The trailer for One Battle After Another reflects the difficulty Warner Bros. faced in marketing a film that resists being distilled into a three-minute sizzle reel. The most memorable moments aren't trailer-friendly "money shots," and some highlights, when stripped of context, land flat. Efforts to emphasize the film's humor are similarly misguided: while One Battle After Another contains moments of wit, it is not a comedy, and at times its sensibilities veer closer to those of another Anderson-Wes. Perhaps this is partly due to Benicio del Toro, who, having played memorable roles in The French Dispatch and The Phoenician Scheme, brings a similarly offbeat tone to Sergio.
One Battle After Another feels inherently cinematic-I can't imagine its climax carrying the same impact at home without an exceptionally high-end setup. As always, Anderson's casting is impeccable. DiCaprio plays against type as a shambling loser who spends much of the film in a bathrobe. Penn channels his best warped R. Lee Ermey. Teyana Taylor is a dynamo, embodying sexuality and power in equal measure. And newcomer Chase Infiniti is, as the saying goes, a revelation; her scenes with Penn crackle with tension and energy.
I doubt One Battle After Another will dominate the box office as it bridges the shift from the noise of summer to the quieter rhythms of awards season, but for those who eagerly anticipate a new Paul Thomas Anderson release-arriving, as they generally do, every three to five years-this film will more than satisfy. Destined to be counted among 2025's best, One Battle After Another is proof that September isn't always the cinematic wasteland it's often made out to be.
© 2025 James Berardinelli
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