General [SPOILER ALERT] for One Battle After Another. See this amazing film, then read my review for what to this point is the best movie of 2025.
Holy sh*t, Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA). After your first incredible decade of filmmaking, I was a bit letdown at your 15 year odyssey into adulthood. But I understand know: those were your one battles after another, preparing you to take on this gigantic, immersive, incredible tale you take us on in this glorious American epic.
One Battle After Another opens on the French 75, a group of revolutionaries, starting their fight by freeing an immigration detention facility near the Mexico/US border. The Queen Bee is Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), wholly committed to her mission alongside fellow patriots/terrorists Mae (Alana Haim), Laredo (Wood Harris), Deandra (Regina Hall), Junglepussy (Shayna McHayle), the “Gringo Coyote” (Paul Grimstad), and Talleyrand (Dijon Duenas). Oh, and “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio), the explosives expert, who becomes immediately smitten with Perfida. As the French 75 attacks grow, the government starts mobilizing to stop them, including fast rising Steven J. Lockjaw, as enamored with Perfida and the revolutionaries as anyone else. As Lockjaw grows in power, his reach becomes unlimited, even when Pat stops revolutionizing, and goes into hiding as “Bob Ferguson,” to raise his and Perfida’s daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti) in the sanctuary city Baktan Cross.
One Battle After Another is the culmination of PTA’s career. Years of honing his craft had him ready to make this masterpiece. His idea is a master stroke: how do young revolutionaries and fascists grow old? From there, he crafts a giant 3 piece arc. The directors starts by cramming The Battle of Algiers into the first act, showing us how the French 75 operate as an organization. Their origin story dovetails with Steven Lockjaw’s: a fascinating, diabolical creation by Anderson and Penn who’s always ready for war because he’s constantly at war with himself. After that’s over, we move into the present day for Bob, Willa, and Lockjaw.
This middle section is PTA magic. All the rich themes he introduces into the first act get explored magnificently here, especially through the relationship between Bob and Willa’s sensei Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio Del Toro): performative rebellion, action vs. emotion, Rorschaching religion, casualties of war, true power, generational misunderstandings, etc. It’s simultaneously very scary…and amusing, a tonal mishmash that only a great director like PTA can figure out and work into his movie pretty seamlessly. Sequences this good are rare, so when you’re lucky enough to notice you’re in one like I was here, I couldn’t help but find myself locked in, eagerly awaiting the next incredible, propulsive, moment.
These blocks have been building to the big finale. The director takes another genre turn here, as we go into some unholy modern Western fusing Hell or High Water with Sicario. Each main character left gets their logical conclusion (a practical, sobering mixture of good and bad), but we get there with a little PTA pizazz. There’s a giant sequence at the end that uses the landscape in a way I’ve never quite seen before, building up all sorts of tension towards an exciting conclusion that will have you wanting to stand up & applaud. The acting is top notch, from people you’d expect (Sean Penn, DiCaprio, Del Toro), and people you wouldn’t: for her first film, Chase Infiniti holds her own against some of cinema’s best, a testament to her magnetism and the character she crafts out of Willa Ferguson.
Ignore the running time (2hr, 45 minutes). Roger Ebert said it best: “no bad film is too short, and no great film is too long.” The great critic would have adored One Battle After Another, and its director, Paul Thomas Anderson, for the true epic of cinema he crafts with this amazing film. Between this one and Sinners, outsiders can get a full understanding of The United States of America, in all its grandeur…and horror.