“One Battle After Another” is a film chock-full of unexpected occurrences.
It’s unexpected that it would contain the most thrilling car chase of the past few years.
It’s also unexpected that a group of middle-aged white men would start their meeting by exchanging Christmas pleasantries, only to then be so disgusted by the existence of a mixed-race child that they put a bounty on. And it’s unexpected for a place called the “Chicken Licken Frozen Food Farm” to be the pivotal location for the film’s middle act.
It’s even unexpected that Leonardo DiCaprio would play such a burnout dirtbag after years as the most suave man in the world – a choice that allows him to once again flex his status as cinema’s most unconventionally funny performer.
And yet, being that this is 2025, nothing should really surprise us anymore. “One Battle After Another” is the apex of a string of 2025 films directly about the 2025 experience.
This story involves themes of immigration, liberation, radicalization and revolution – all seemingly ripped straight from the headlines and gloriously projected onto IMAX screens. The National Guard is dispatched to sanctuary cities, ICE encampments are crammed with unattended children, and marginalization is performed in the open without any remorse.
But by also being a loose adaptation – “inspiration” is the label used in the credits – of the 1990 Thomas Pynchon novel “Vineland,” writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson illustrates that none of these issues is brand new to the American political landscape. It’s an endless cycle of progress and pushback, with each side digging in its heels a little deeper with each subsequent turn.
Case in point: the French 75 militant group – and its most outspoken comrade, Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor). The letters and protests weren’t getting the job done, so they’ve been substituted with raids and bombings.
The liberation of an immigration detention center is where it all starts, with Perfidia initiating a dangerous dominant-submissive relationship with Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), and Pat (DiCaprio) impressing her with his fireworks display.
The blood of battle runs hot, and so does the passion between Perfidia and Pat. A baby girl is born – the next generation to carry the revolutionary flame. But before the light can even be passed, it’s extinguished when Lockjaw seizes the upper hand and picks off the group’s members one by one.
Pat is renamed Bob Ferguson, taking the baby (now named Willa) on the run to the backwoods of Baktan Cross. Fifteen quiet years go by, with Bob and Willa (Chase Infiniti) living a secluded life for reasons she doesn’t totally understand. Lockjaw’s mission eventually gets unpaused, with his pursuit of the two fugitives plunging the town into a hotbed of political turmoil.
“One Battle After Another” is the outlier in Anderson’s filmography. It’s his first film in more than 20 years to take place in the present day – assumedly, since a specific date isn’t given. It’s also his costliest production by a wide margin, with a reported budget between $130 million and $175 million. Anderson fully embraces both facts, reminding us why the artist responsible for “Boogie Nights,” “There Will Be Blood” and “The Master” deserves to have a canvas just as expensive as “Jurassic World: Rebirth.”
Catch me on a good day, and I’ll proclaim “Magnolia” to be the greatest film ever made. This is a frantic story for a frantic time, furiously rushing from one location to the next. Like “Magnolia,” Anderson just keeps pushing us along, never allowing for a moment for wrist watches to be checked. One hundred sixty-one minutes fly by, all of it subsumed by Jonny Greenwood’s score that might as well have been recorded as the piano was falling down the stairs.
For all its serious earnestness, this is also a deeply silly and funny story. Lockjaw may as well be a description of the character rather than a surname. Penn walks around with the same mobility as a sunglass carousel, full of pent-up anger and jealousy. He desperately wants to be a member of the Christmas Adventurers Club, a group of wealthy white men who declare themselves superior solely because they deem it so.
It’s easy to laugh at this ludicrousness, but we all know there probably is such a thing in our world. DiCaprio is also wonderfully buffoonish as a retired activist who can no longer remember secret passwords or see himself within the big picture.
It might seem crass to talk about award prospects so soon after the film’s debut and so far from this year’s Academy Awards. But like “Oppenheimer,” a movie of this size and relevance doesn’t come around all that often, and that rarity needs to be celebrated.
Anderson is one of the biggest losers in Oscar history, going 0-for-11 over a span of nearly 30 years. The time is now for a revolution within his film, and so it is for him to walk up that gilded stage, receiving one honor after another.
Warner Bros. will release “One Battle After Another” in theaters nationwide on Sept. 26.
Eden Prairie resident Hunter Friesen is a film critic who owns and operates The Cinema Dispatch, a website where he writes reviews, essays and more. He’s also the film critic for the Woodbury News Net. He currently serves as president of the Minnesota Film Critics Association and travels the globe covering film festivals big and small. To view his entire body of work, visit his website and Instagram.
