One Battle After Another

Paul Thomas Anderson delivers yet another American epic

To call something an “American epic” should be reserved to a text that captures the complexity, contradictions, promise, and betrayal that the idea of America entails. The greatest works to carry this tag include “The Great Gatsby” or “The Grapes of Wrath.” In film, we’ve gotten the likes of Giant (1956) or The Godfather (1972). Yet as the medium of cinema has turned increasingly commercial and risk averse, more prone to producing a sequel or remake than a critical thought piece, American epics have gotten fewer and farther between. Paul Thomas Anderson is a director who’s already made one definitive American epic in There Will Be Blood (2007), and he’s astonishingly delivered another in One Battle After Another (2025).

One Battle After Another is loosely inspired on the Thomas Pynchon novel “Vineland” and follows a former American guerrilla fighter, Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) from the left-wing Weather Underground-type group, the French 75. In his youth, Bob helped the French 75 liberate immigrant detention centers on the US Mexico border, bomb campaign offices for opposing politicians, and rob banks. After being left with a newborn daughter from his fellow fighter Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), Bob fades into the background for 16 years until he and his now grown daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) are thrust back into action by the unrelenting white supremacist Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn).

As with any Pynchon novel, the book is sprawling and complex; having already adapted a Pynchon novel in Inherent Vice (2014) to mixed results, Anderson rightly trims a lot of the book’s tangents. Focusing on the father daughter relationship gives One Battle After Another an essential emotional core, which permits other socio-political elements from “Vineland” and Anderson’s mind to emerge comprehensively.

One Battle After Another captures the pulse of the US in a scarily prescient way. While filmed before the start of the second Trump term, Anderson’s film captures the weariness of anti-fascist resistance, which prefers to forget authoritarian dangers through drugs and drink. Yet, this apathy always leads to an inevitable retribution from those in power. The theme of far-right approaches to immigration in the film is one that appears like a real-time reflection of America’s present; our main villain is a racist army Colonel in charge of immigration enforcement, who takes on increasing fascist tendencies. The subsequent backlash in the form of political violence is yet another scary echo of the current American political environment.

Many films reflect back current social and political moments, yet the genius of One Battle After Another is in the excavation of the scary veneer. This is intriguing regarding the unearthed hypocrisies we all carry, especially when purporting to be ideological purists. Col. Lockjaw, while eager to join an elite group of powerful white supremacists also has a lust and love of black women; Bob for all his revolutionary fervor becomes recluse and quiet when his daughter is born, seeking the quiet American life (even if that itself is a stale illusion). One Battle After Another clearly has our heroes be left-wing fighters against the racist oppressors, yet this political tilt doesn’t seek to craft characters as worthy archetypes. Bob, our supposed hero, is one of the most bumbling and clumsy protagonists that DiCaprio has ever played, being more of a liability than an aid; meanwhile Col. Lockjaw is not a moustache twirling villain, but rather a pitiable man with a deep insecurity about his masculinity.

One Battle After Another is in large part a film about the self-harm that ideological purism on any side delivers. Flexibility and contradictions are necessary in our humanity, and it is in our acceptance and understanding of these that we can form more healthy societies. Yet, as with much of the western population, it seems that this type of thinking and discourse has been abandoned under the threat of a very real democratic backsliding, one which One Battle After Another indirectly argues resistance is against.

As with any American epic, One Battle After Another also works as a metaphoric story of America itself. An initial clash of left and right ideologies births Willa, a biracial kid, which upon maturity proves to be both a symbol of a hopeful future for some and a problematic reminder for others. The film’s text is dense enough to extrapolate further readings, ranging from the weaponization of religion, the contradictory forms of anti-capitalist rebellion, and the role of authority and white identity, yet diving into them all would be worthy of a feature essay instead of a review.  

Anderson has been one of the greatest American directors working in the last few decades, with great anticipation from all cinephiles for each of his releases. It wouldn’t be sacrilegious to put him on a similar cinematic pedestal to Martin Scorsese given his ability to deconstruct the tricky aspects of Americana. One Battle After Another is expertly directed, with Anderson inserting a signature awkward humor. Anderson also pushes himself in a new way by staging two of the most riveting and tense car chase sequences I’ve seen in years. One near the end featured cars racing in an out of sight on an undulating road over hills. Anderson himself acknowledges taking heavy inspiration from the “car chase movie” Bullitt (1968) for the sequence.

The performances are calibrated to perfection, straddling a line between seriousness and near-absurdity with the deft hand Anderson usually employs. The cast is stacked too, with previously unmentioned Benicio Del Toro, Regina Hall, Alana Haim, and Tony Goldwyn also making appearances. DiCaprio delivers his most disheveled and harried performance in a truly great comedic turn, while Infiniti showcases a gravitas and charisma in her feature film debut. Taylor is particularly magnetic in a short but fiery turn at Perfidia, yet it is Penn who stood out the most. In his best performance since Milk (2008) Penn dominates every scene he’s in delivering the clashing contradictions of Lockjaw with an intensity mixed with tragedy. He is instantly the most interesting character on screen, and I’m glad we’ve recovered a talent we’d been missing from the American for nearly two decades.

If we are to compare Anderson’s two American epics together, There Will Be Blood continues to hold a definitive dramatic heft over One Battle After Another. This is due to the added humor, which cheapens the stakes and serious subject, and the funny but simpleton protagonist Bob, who fails to match the kinetic rivalry with Lockjaw that Daniel Plainview and Paul Sunday had in There Will be Blood. Nevertheless, One Battle After Another is a worthy cinematic “American epic.” Like all great art, the film arrives at a time when its themes, characters, and setting could not be more relevant or poignant within the current American climate, adding a necessary voice to the staid discourse of resisting today’s authoritarians.

8.6/10