Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is a movie of firsts that never feels tentative. It is his first modern-set feature since Punch-Drunk Love, his first collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio, and his first film of this scale, reportedly in the $130 to $175 million range. What is not new is the command. From the first explosion to the last chase, this is PTA in full control, turning a feverish political thriller into one of 2025’s most purely thrilling big-screen experiences.
DiCaprio plays Bob Ferguson, known among his French 75 comrades as “Ghetto Pat” and “Rocket Man,” a jittery true believer who stages bombings beside his lover and co-conspirator Perfidia Beverly Hills, played with seductive authority by Teyana Taylor. Their underground romance collides with state power when Perfidia is subtly and instinctively romanced by Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, a snarling Sean Penn who gives the part a macho menace and a slippery need to belong. Perfidia’s inevitable deal with the authorities splinters the cell and sends her into witness protection. She disappears. The movement fractures.
Fifteen years later, Bob is holed up off the grid with his daughter Willa, played by Chase Infiniti, their uneasy peace sustained by Bob’s haze of self-medication. He cannot stop looking over his shoulder, and worse, he cannot summon the secret codes that once tied French 75 together. Lockjaw has only climbed higher, now courted by the Christmas Admirers, a white nationalist bloc with the cheery slogan “Hail Saint Nick.” To cement his place, he must scrub any trace of prior entanglements, including the possibility that Willa is his child. He fans unrest in the sanctuary town of Baktan Cross to mask an extraction, and the fuse on PTA’s action epic is lit.
What follows is a rolling series of set pieces that somehow feel bigger and more tactile at the same time. Paul Thomas Anderson shoots like he rented a whole city for a month and used every block, yet the action always reads as bodies in space, not pixels in a server farm. Exploding facades and crowd chaos give way to a mid-film street riot that surges and recedes with terrifying clarity, and the third act shifts into an exhilarating pursuit that earns every gasp. Jonny Greenwood’s score is the conductor, ratcheting and releasing in waves that keep pace with PTA’s rhythm, just as in There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread. The music does not decorate the scenes, it propels them.
The cast is stacked and nearly everyone scores. DiCaprio leans into paranoia and punch-drunk bravado, funny in the right places, frightening when the drugs wear off and the mission returns. Teyana Taylor owns the opening movement, giving Perfidia a coiled intelligence that lingers even after she disappears. Chase Infiniti grows the part from soft-spoken presence to emotional pivot, especially in the final stretch. Sean Penn makes Lockjaw a chilling study in insecurity and cruelty. And Benicio del Toro walks off with every scene as Willa’s karate sensei, a sly, lived-in supporting turn that feels instantly iconic.
Paul Thomas Anderson sketches subcultures and pseudo-militias with such vivid detail that you want to stay longer in each pocket. But the film remains taut across an expansive runtime, a rare blockbuster that is both maximal and precise.
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One Battle After Another is the sort of audacious, auteur-driven spectacle people say studios do not make anymore. It entertains at the surface, then deepens if you want to wrestle with its portrait of modern reactionary movements and the seductive myths that power them. As a Paul Thomas Anderson showcase, it sits comfortably among his best movies. As a Leonardo DiCaprio showcase, it is his loosest and most live-wire work in years. As a 2025 event movie, it is the bar to clear.
Score: 9/10
One Battle After Another (2025)
- Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Chase Infiniti, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Alana Haim, Wood Harris, Tony Goldwyn
- Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
- Genre: Action, Crime, Thriller
- Runtime: 162 minutes
- Rated: R
- Release Date: September 26, 2025
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