Rejoice! Paul Thomas Anderson has saved cinema! Okay, perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but his new film, One Battle After Another, is a breakthrough. As though it were 1975 and not 2025, Warner Bros. took an auteur, gave him free rein and a big budget, and said, “Do your thing.” And man, did PTA do his thing.
At nearly three hours long, the film is a roller coaster ride—literally and figuratively. It’s exciting, funny, audacious, and politically trenchant. As is his wont, Anderson borrows a lot from Robert Altman and a bit from Stanley Kubrick, while in this case throwing in a touch of Quentin Tarantino and even Wes Anderson. The film is also loosely based on Thomas Pynchon’s novel, Vineland, but it’s a creation all of PTA’s own—a combination of the kind of loosey-goosey, shaggy film style he demonstrated in Inherent Vice and Licorice Pizza with the disciplined craft of Phantom Thread and There Will Be Blood. In other words, the auteur is firing on all cylinders. It doesn’t hurt that he has Leonardo DiCaprio, America’s best living actor as his lead. (Fight me!)
DiCaprio plays “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun, a reluctant member of a resistance group called The French 75. He’s an explosive expert—good at creating diversions—but he’s not a committed revolutionary. He’s tagging along with his lady, the fierce true believer, Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor). When she gets pregnant, he wants to slow things down a bit, settle into a domestic life, but she wants no part of it. Her devotion to the cause—various causes in this case, mostly involving protecting immigrants from inhumane treatment at the hands of an ICE-like agency—is too deep. One of the most memorable images of the film is Perfidia, extremely pregnant with her belly on full display, shooting a machine gun. “Bitch, I feel like Tony Montana!” she shouts.
Fast forward 16 years later and “Ghetto” Pat, now in hiding and going by the name Bob, is raising their daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti) on his own. By his own admission, his brain has been fried by drugs and alcohol, but even in his desiccated state, he’s a protective and devoted father. (He even tries to understand the pronouns of Willa’s nonbinary friend. “They, them, Dad,” Willa sighs. “Why is that so hard?”)
Trouble comes in the form of Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), a sadistic military man who had an encounter with Perfidia years earlier and has become dangerously obsessed with her. He is now being recruited by a powerful, cloak-and-dagger white supremacist group called the Christmas Adventurers Club (“Hail St. Nick!” is their greeting) and needs to find Bob and Willa to tie up some loose ends from his past.
Bob has no desire to get back in the game, but when Lockjaw kidnaps Willa, he goes into dad-bod Rambo mode. Sporting a bad goatee and a flannel robe—soon to be as iconic as The Dude’s Pendleton sweater—and carrying a 1G (and therefore untraceable) phone that is desperately in need of a charge, he goes after her.
He gets help from the super Zen local karate teacher known as Sensei (Benicio Del Toro) who also runs a so-called “Underground Railroad” for Latin immigrants. (The vastness of Sensei’s network will prove to be useful to Bob down the road.)
Anderson is dealing with larger-than-life archetypes here. Bob is the hapless father desperate to find his daughter, played by DiCaprio with a hilarious franticness and touching pathos. Sensei is the unflappable resistance leader, brought to life by an effortlessly cool Del Toro. Lockjaw, played by Penn with a bow-legged gait and a maniacal look in his eyes, is the perverse villain. Dazzling newcomer Chase Infiniti is the beautiful, free-spirited daughter with more than a touch of her mother’s moxie and defiance. Regina Hall also memorably plays a member of the French 75 who is as committed as Perfidia but with a gentler touch.
It’s impossible to overstate how much fun this thing is, with twists and welcome detours along the way. And the filmmaking! Such verve. Such confidence. Whether Anderson is filming that already famous undulating chase scene, following Bob’s desperate attempt to charge his phone through the chaos, or showing us that top secret Christmas Adventurers Club with their Patagonia Vests and smug bonhomie, you know you’re in the hands of a master.
Movies are so back, baby!