One Battle After Another (2025)

 

One Battle After Another (2025)

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor, Benicio Del Toro, Chase Infiniti

Short Review, no spoilers

One Battle After Another is a swirling, exhilarating maelstrom of absurdity and profundity and a wildly entertaining masterpiece from Paul Thomas Anderson. Further refining an approach to his characters that is peculiarly humane and sensitive to their follies and fates, PTA’s heroes are once again both protagonists and victims in the time and environment they find themselves in. The result is a presentation of a world as disturbingly volatile, but also with the potential for unexpected and imperfect heroism.

Full Review (spoilers)

In One Battle After Another, geeky guerillas are seen teamed up with ball-busting riot girls and pitted against an insidious far right consortium of ‘police’ enforcers in military uniform and MAGA-style, mason-like power hoarders who meet in the back rooms of big suburban heaps like benign golf buddies. The flipside of said back rooms is a ramshackle rabbit warren of rebels and Hispanics, as seen when chilled-out Sensei (Del Toro) comes to the aid of lapsed revolutionary Bob (DiCaprio). Environment is subtly but repeatedly contrasted throughout, with the rebels seen occupying cluttered and warmly lit settings, while the powers that be are seen in colder, barer circumstances lacking in evidence of life. This is aligned with the world of the mainstream and a barren witness protection home that Bob’s lover Profidia is placed in (also from where she escapes, seen drifting as easily in to Mexico as it is hard to make the opposite journey) a stark cell for this firebrand of a female after getting caught and coerced in to becoming a ‘rat’.

Teyana Taylor as Profidia is F.I.E.R.C.E, blowing the screen apart with intimidating charisma but she’s also far from two dimensional, delivering a striking performance that is balanced by an equally filter-less lapse in to self-doubt when she becomes a mother. Her denial in the face of maternity is sensitively and non-judgementally portrayed – hilarious when Bob watches on baffled as she uses a heavily pregnant belly to rest her AK47 on (mirrored later on when daughter Willa engages in her own gun training as a teenager); tragic when she comes to hate her role as mother, but understandable when she draws on feminist rage-speak to defend her decision to leave. Leonardo DiCaprio is wonderful as a middle-aged ‘90s dropout, Lebowski-esque without being derivative, very funny in his dirgy vulnerability and endearing in his own imperfect fatherhood that is nevertheless proven to be utterly dedicated. Sean Penn is valiantly un-vain and hard to watch, a credit to what might be his best performance as a grotesque fascist who is as hilarious as he is pitiful, representing the ridiculous but real threat of a silly bully with worrying power and childish urges. It’s a standout portrayal that epitomises the serio-comic nature of the film – Colonel Lockjaw’s journey from lovelorn fool who becomes dangerously obsessed with Profidia, to ruthlessly racist anti-father when he discovers he has a compromisingly mixed-race daughter, ending in a seeker of secret society acceptance so giddily needful you pity his tragic end. Blending himself perfectly in to the rhythm of the film, at one point he licks what turns out to be a comb in a curious and seemingly perverse gesture before slicking his ghastly hair, and then we understand it as preparation ahead of a meeting with the daftly named Christmas Adventurers, an organisation of powerful individuals he is fervently desperate to be a member of.

We can go back to Boogie Nights for PTA’s understanding of the power that sex has, sometimes propelling individuals to behave ridiculously and sometimes fatally. Either way, it becomes a part of his characters’ journeys – Profidia is shown to be full-blooded whatever, whether getting riskily aroused after helping her beloved Bob set up his rockets, or using it to torment and humiliate Lockjaw. As a result of the latter however, she inadvertently ignites a sexual obsession within Lockjaw which will be her downfall. On all sides we see driven individuals that nevertheless have penetrable points (literally in the case of Lockjaw when he blackmails Profidia in to gratification involving a handgun…). Even the revolutionaries - at odds with the romantic image of honourable idols willing to suffer and die for their cause no matter what – can be bullied in to informing on each other. Seemingly bulletproof Profidia herself becomes a pariah for ratting her fellow rebels out. In fact, although Bob would appear to be the weakest link on the surface, (confirmed by Profidia’s unimpressed mother), he instinctively rises to the responsibility of fatherhood, and later his scrappy, angst-ridden beta male demonstrates an unconventional heroism when he's rocked out of his dope-smoking world to rescue Willa from Lockjaw. In doing so, Bob provides a heartening vision of hope - that the apparently useless drop outs of the past might – god forbid - still be of some use to younger generations.

PTA also demonstrates a surprising flair for thrilling tension, sometimes in unusual ways. Whether it be Bob’s hysterical struggle to remember code speak, or a wait for a mobile paternity test (it’s hard to discern who’s more disgusted by the result, Lockjaw or Willa), it’s edge of the seat stuff throughout. There are various chases and two standout scenes towards the end: the first is Willa’s escape from assassination when the hitman hired to dispose of her by Lockjaw deliberates in stoic indecision for an agonising time before the most understated rescue ever, even while sacrificing his life in the process. The second sees a Christmas Adventurer attempting to finish the job when his Jaguar chases Willa in the hitman’s car over seemingly endless desert hills. Out of context, the vision might have been soothing, with repeated shots of both cars emerging and ducking, emerging and ducking. As it is however, the scene stretches nerves to the limit, finally culminating in the fist-pump moment when Bob’s buzzing Nissan Sentra turns up to try and save Willa once and for all.

Nevertheless, Willa has her own smarts, cleverly luring the CA in to ploughing in to the back of her car and mustering the courage to take him out from the side of the road. A tense reunion later, and ‘father’ and ‘daughter’ are back together. Meanwhile, Lockjaw is apparently lying dead in his own car after the CA shot him, but then an epilogue reveals that Lockjaw miraculously survived and is apparently to be accepted in to the Christmas Adventurers after all. Hilariously questioned on how he came to be ‘raped in reverse’ before being led in to a plain office with an albeit stunning view, he couldn’t be happier. This will be the Colonel’s last scene though, as gas pumps inconspicuously in to the room; the final shot is of his deformed face framed in a furnace as the CA’s dispose of his body.

In One Battle After Another, PTA takes on a ferociously divided world and depicts it as sometimes tragic and sometimes ridiculous with flawed characters who ‘win some and lose some.’ A wisely soothing sentiment from the reliably charismatic Benicio Del Toro as Sensei reminds us to remain calm even in times of strife. Nevertheless … OBAA is unquestionably a film that deserves to win big at the Oscars – Viva la revolución!