However, the soothsaying of its director and screenwriter (working, very<\/em> loosely, from Thomas Pynchon\u2019s Vineland<\/em>) shouldn\u2019t serve as any kind of a deterrent to nervous viewers who are either a) looking to escape the various horrors around us, or b) not interested in what a bunch of Hollyweird liberals have to say about the state of things. Because One Battle<\/em> isn\u2019t just Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s most political movie to date \u2014 it\u2019s also his most straightforward, an above-the-title star vehicle full of action set pieces, emotional resonance, and big laughs. In other words, it\u2019s a PTA film, and it\u2019s also a movie<\/em>-movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It asserts its movie-ness right from the jump, in a killer opening sequence detailing a breakout of undocumented immigrants at the Otay Mesa Detention Center. The action is organized and executed by \u201cThe French 75,\u201d a fearless revolutionary group, led by (among others) Perfidia, played with ferocity by A Thousand and One<\/em>\u2019s Teyana Taylor. She\u2019s acutely aware that their bomb-maker Pat (Leonardo DiCaprio) has a little crush on her, and she uses that (\u201cMake it good, make it right, impress me,\u201d she instructs him); she also uses her sex appeal to humiliate the highest-ranking officer on duty, Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), looking him right in the eye and telling him what\u2019s what. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This entire opening section, detailing that action and several subsequent ones, is a combustible mixture of sex, violence, and revolution, orchestrated by Anderson with the kind of pop electricity he hasn\u2019t tossed off since the first hour of Boogie Nights<\/em>. But as with that film, the fun can\u2019t last \u2014 the authorities catch up with them, bullets fly (a couple of the shock deaths here are genuinely startling), Perfidia goes into witness protection, and Pat goes underground \u2014 with their newborn daughter Charlene in tow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sixteen years pass, and, we\u2019re told, \u201cthe world has changed very little.\u201d Pat and Charlene are now Bob and Willa Ferguson (Chase Infiniti), living in Colorado, under the strain of a role-reversal dynamic; she\u2019s like a babysitter to her burned-out dad, who has deep-fried his once-sharp brain on weed and booze. But then, out of nowhere, Col. Lockjaw and his jack-booted thugs track them down, which prompts a tantalizing question: what would you do if all your dad\u2019s paranoid bullshit turned out to be true?<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is one of DiCaprio\u2019s most vulnerable and touching performances of late, particularly in the dimensions he gives to the character\u2019s frustrated father angles. Anderson has four children with his partner Maya Rudolph, the first born 20 years ago, but this is his first film that feels fully informed by fatherhood, and there\u2019s something utterly heartbreaking about the way this helpless man despairs, \u201cI don\u2019t know how to do her hair right.\u201d DiCaprio also handles the character\u2019s numerous comic beats well; the fact that he plays most of the back half in a bathrobe makes Big Lebowski<\/em> comparisons somewhat inevitable, as does the uproarious scene (featured in the trailers) when he attempts to make contact with his handlers, and cannot remember the damn passwords and spycraft in the slightest. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Infiniti, a newcomer (this is her film debut, after one television credit) is a powerhouse, delivering the character\u2019s steeliness, warmth, cynicism, and toughness, often within the same scene, sometimes within the same moment. This is not some kind of Taken<\/em> situation, the helpless daughter who must be saved; she\u2019s a tough customer, and then, in the killer closing scenes, she\u2019s ultimately the one who finds and defines the emotional truth between these two people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Penn, delightfully and entertainingly, is fully unhinged; DiCaprio\u2019s wide-eyed look of disbelief after their first encounter kinda says it all. He\u2019s rarely a subtle actor, particularly lately, but that\u2019s for the best here, and I frankly admire his refusal to make any piece of this character remotely likable or sympathetic. Instead, he beautifully, chillingly personifies a kind of cold-blooded sociopathic American sickness that seems all but inescapable as of late. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And that, if anything, is the twist of watching this scarily prescient picture in the fall of 2025: that certain touches that might have played like satire not too long ago \u2014 like the cabal of white supremacist power brokers in politics and business who are \u201cdedicated to making the world safe and pure\u201d \u2014 now feel like straightforward fact. The intensity of the dread Anderson is building throughout One Battle After Another <\/em>(underlined by the merciless plinking of Jonny Greenwood\u2019s score, the sound of an anxiety attack) is multiplied exponentially by the world it\u2019s being unleashed in, and as we watch military men kidnapping American civilians in broad daylight, it feels pressing and urgent in a way this filmmaker\u2019s work hasn\u2019t before. It\u2019s not a throwaway that we catch Bob watching The Battle of Algiers <\/em>on TV, but it doesn\u2019t feel aspirational, or hyperbolic. It simply feels that this, like that, was the movie for the moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “One Battle After Another” is in theaters this weekend.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/one-battle2-1024x576.webp\")
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