It feels as if Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” runs the risk of facing two different knee-jerk responses, each driven by contrasting views of current events. The angry and cynical-minded folks, who look for politics in everything they watch, might see the film as an dire reflection of a dubious America and an urgent call to action. The equally angry but more defensive crowd, who want to excise politics from everything they call entertainment, might dismiss it as another vain expression of Hollywood’s growing disdain for the country. Whatever.
But then there’s a third contingent – the PTA faithful, whose love for Anderson’s movies transcends politics or worldviews. They find their happy place in everything PTA does and often grade his movies on a curve. For me, there’s a level of self-indulgence that can often plague PTA’s filmmaking and storytelling. It’s an issue that’s noticeable (and by extension, frustrating) in some films more than others. At the same time, Anderson has made one of the greatest movies of our time with “There Will Be Blood”. And the sheer genius of “Phantom Thread” can’t be overstated.
So what to make of Anderson’s latest, “One Battle After Another”? Inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland”, this proudly defiant and slightly neurotic concoction has more stuffing than a Thanksgiving turkey. At times it wants to be an action movie. At other times a bonkers black comedy. It even shoots for being a thoughtful daddy-daughter drama. But more than anything it’s a surprisingly one-the-nose political jaunt that only sees our modern times through one restricted lens. And in its desperate efforts to ‘say something’ at every turn, it forsakes simple things like character building and narrative cohesion.
The movie’s problems start early and pretty much persist for the duration of the film’s lengthy 160 minutes. First there’s Anderson’s struggle with juggling his film’s abject absurdity and finger-wagging seriousness. The lines frequently blur together, making it too preposterous to be taken seriously and too serious and self-important to be funny. Then there’s Anderson’s chaotic storytelling which bounces us from one point the next while rarely slowing down to let anything develop organically.
The film opens with an extended prologue where we’re introduced to the French 75, a domestic terrorist group hiding behind the gentler title of “revolutionaries”. They’re a sundry yet organized faction with plenty of weapons and all the favorite hashtagged anti-establishment slogans. They blow up buildings, rob banks, and invade outposts (with very little condemnation), all under the emotionally charged leadership of Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor). She has a relatively small amount of screen time, but she ends up driving much of the story in some really bizarre ways.
Perfidia is tough as nails and extremely dedicated to her radical cause. But as we watch, Anderson seems conflicted on how to portray her. For the most part he’s smitten to the point of venerating her despite her unhinged antics which don’t always make sense. Look no further than her wacky first encounter with one of the more ridiculous characters of the year, Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn). During a raid on a detention center, Perfidia apprehends Lockjaw. Her bizarre actions trigger some weird psychosexual infatuation within him that sets his course for the remainder of the movie.
The bulk of the story unfolds 16 years later with Perfidia long gone, leaving her tag-along lover and former French 75 member, Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) to raise their daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti). A teenager now, Willa spends more time looking after her perpetually paranoid and stoned father than enjoying her high school years. But their lives are rattled when Bob gets word that Lockjaw has discovered their location. Still driven by his twisted (and quite baffling) obsession with Perfidia, Lockjaw gives orders to kill Bob on sight and take Willa alive.
From there Anderson bops across his vision of America with the Bob-Perfidia-Lockjaw triangle in tow. As he does, his heroes are helped by an assortment of allies including a karate teacher who moonlights as a Harriet Tubman for illegal migrants (Benicio del Toro), a former French 75 loyalist (Regina Hall), and a convent of pot-growing nuns. As for PTA’s villains, they’re all very bad and very white. They range from cops, soldiers, and congressmen to the Christmas Adventurers Club, a cartoonishly silly and shallow white supremacist outfit so weakly sketched they would’ve been better left on the cutting room floor.
As for the talent-rich cast, no one is given much room to deliver a truly great performance. DiCaprio is the biggest victim, spending the film’s first half developing a unique and intriguing character only to spend the rest of his time frantically running around and clownishly yelling into oblivion. Del Toro is briefly terrific but is firmly handcuffed to Bob’s erratic story. As for Penn, he does what he’s asked. Sadly for him it results in nothing more than a farcical one-note caricature who’s too vile to be funny and too ludicrous to be menacing. The true bright spots come from Infiniti’s strong feature debut, and Hall who routinely grounds the film in some semblance of reality.
“One Battle After Another” is the kind of movie custom-made for an awards season push. It’s certain to be heralded as a modern “masterpiece”, an “important” film, an “essential” movie of our time, etc. Frankly, it’s none of those things, falling well short of PTA’s finer works. There are a couple of well-staged car chases and an invigorating score from Jonny Greenwood. But the film is 160 minutes of unfocused energy, fueled by plot gimmicks, careless romanticizations, and pulpit pounding that takes lazy potshots at real-world issues rather than actually examining them.
VERDICT – 2 STARS
Keith & the Movies 
Reflecting my thoughts! Right verdict !!
I went hopeful but left exhausted.
Funny, a friend went to this last night and texted me from the theater during the movie that it was terrible, and I think ready to leave with an hour to go but his son wanted to finish it out. After he got out he called me and (jokingly, I think) blamed me for pointing out that it had 98 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Anyway, I think I trust you and my friend more than RT.
LOL. I just logged my review on Rotten Tomatoes and noticed I was only the fourth critic out of over 200 to go rotten on it. A lot of people seem to really love it. I just can’t get onboard with them. Too many glaring issues.
Another triggered MAGAt
Hardly. It’s quite telling that you came to that conclusion.
Do you find yourself beginning a lot of sentences with “Well…actually…” You seem like the type.
Nope. Sure don’t.
I thought I might be alone.
https://kirkhamclass.blogspot.com/2025/09/one-battle-after-another-2025.html
Thanks for sharing your review. We definitely see several things the same way. And it seems like we are part of the few. At the time when I logged this on Rotten Tomatoes I was the third out of over 200 critics to give it a splotch. That blows my mind.
I told Mrs. B I wasn’t “buying into” the over-the-top praise for this movie, which has already been given the Oscar from what I can tell. These stellar reviews I am seeing give me the vibe they are for the director more so than the actual product. I think a lot of movie critics feel PTA has been under-appreciated and want to elevate this film blindly, rather than taking those rose-colored glasses off and commenting just on what hit the screen instead of whom was behind the cameras. I had no interest in seeing this one anyway, so I’m good.
It’s really hard to argue with what you’re saying. There is a segment of PTA fans who love everything he does and seem to grade him on a curve. But the adoration is particularly loud for this one which is wild considering how flawed it is. I get it having its defenders. But as you mentioned, the wildly over-the-top love and early Oscar push is just…weird.
one of the most boring and overrated movies I’ve seen in a long time. I was baffled from the first scene, which was so cliché and on the nose it felt like a slap in the face. I thought it was winding the audience up to turn back on itself but it did no such thing. It just bizarrely wandered around the deserts of California and intellectual thought ending in a big nothing burger of a story
The love for it is wild considering its glaring flaws. But PTA gets a lot of passes.
Wow…. you’re wrong. Honestly, I think this is the most accessible thing he’s done since The Master as I really enjoyed this. I love that it explores the fallacies of revolution and how it can go too far and risks the lives of those who want the simple things in life. I also love the quirkiness of it such as Sean Penn’s facial ticks and love for Teyana Taylor’s ass. I love the oddness of it as I really had a ball watching this.
Well…ok. I think you’re being incredibly generous. I don’t think it “explores” much of anything. That’s one of its biggest problems. It simply throws stuff out there and is content with that. Penn gives us one of the most ludicrous one-note characters of the year. The whole thing is 160 minutes of unfocused energy. But PTA tends to get a lot of passes.
So who am I supposed to believe, the critics from the Washington Post, The Atlantic, BBC, Empire, Variety, The Guardian, Hollywood Reporter, Film Threat, Slate, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Arizona Republic, Irish Times, The AP and a handful of other highly regarded publications who all gave One Battle After Another a 100% score, along with articulate praise for the vision and craftsmanship behind the film, or the condescending contrarian who crapped all over it? Moot point since I saw it myself on glorious 70mm celluloid. Stone cold masterpiece. Much more enjoyable when you walk in without an agenda.
LOL. How bizarre. Who are supposed to believe? That’s an easy question to answer. Ultimately you need to believe yourself. Make up your own mind. No critic’s opinion should stop you from seeing a movie you really want to see.
And what agenda? This is the guy who made one of the greatest movies of our time. Why would I go in looking for something different? That’s silly.
As for the goofy contrarian nonsense, it sounds like you looked at my score and got your feathers ruffled rather than actually reading the review. Unfortunate.
(SPOILER ALERT for the entire text)
Hi, I’m writing from Italy. I came across this site because, jokingly speaking, I was suffering from being the only person on planet Earth who didn’t absolutely love PTA’s film. Everyone talks about it enthusiastically as if it were a stunning masterpiece… honestly, I struggled to find nuanced opinions.
Even those who didn’t love it unconditionally feel the need to praise it at least in part, which is fair because it’s not a film to be completely trashed, but even partial detractors end up concluding that the better aspects outweigh the worse ones and drift toward praise. This makes me think there’s a kind of collective wave that, even if you want to, you can’t really escape.
I’ll start with the things I liked, because there are some: the final chase is truly beautiful, a piece of cinema history; the comic moments are irresistible. For the rest, it’s not that the film is unsalvageable, of course, but for me it doesn’t have the depth in the father-daughter relationship that some who absolutely praise OBAA claim. Simply put, the film doesn’t choose to tell us emotions—indeed, for several minutes there are plenty of action scenes and very few pure dialogues (not just comedic ones). The film wants us to observe the characters from the bottom up: sometimes we laugh with them, but more often we laugh at them. The antagonist is a Looney Tunes-style villain; revolutionary DiCaprio seems like he came out of a Coen Brothers film, but we rarely take him seriously. Again, they make us laugh a lot, but I didn’t feel other types of emotions during the viewing.
Another weak point is the omnipresent soundtrack, which is overwhelming at almost every moment. Not that it’s bad, but it’s simply a soundscape that’s too full, omnipresent, and continuous, without much modulation. It can be overwhelming.
Finally, the whole subplot with the girl who is first sold and then saved by the character to whom Penn entrusts his daughter to eliminate her is pure filler. It neither amuses nor moves you emotionally because we know absolutely nothing about that character, who performs a decisive action for the film—it’s a completely uncharted character.
I wouldn’t call it a wrong or poorly made film because it plays with the absurd in a truly skillful way, but it’s certainly not free of flaws, and I don’t consider it an extraordinary masterpiece.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on it. Truthfully, I haven’t heard from many who didn’t heap massive praise on the film. And that genuinely baffles me considering its flaws are there in plain sight. I would figure there would be a more split reaction.
But (as I wrote in my review) PTA movies tend to be graded on a curve. He’s able to get away with a lot that other filmmakers wouldn’t. You analyze the praise well in your comments.
I think his character work is severely lacking in OBAA. I still stand by Infiniti and Hall as delivering the two best characters by far. No one else possesses either nuance or depth. Most are either comic relief, caricatures, or plain underdeveloped.
And don’t get me started on the erratic storytelling!
Yet OBAA was destined for Awards season from its inception. I really wish it was worthy. I had high hopes for it. Sadly….
This movie can make an interesting post about the handling of a theme.
Firstly, I liked it a Lot as an action thriller. I thought it was funny, thrilling, touching, and a bit demented. Therefore I would give it 4/5 stars.
However,
I do not like the timing of the movie given today’s world. Its idea (or worst, maybe it’s message) is twisted about law enforcement. It is relentlessly Anti-Law. But that is another topic for another blog I suppose.
slight correction, should read “unrelentingly” Anti-Law
I really wish I liked it as much as most people seem to. But I found myself frustrated by it and even perplexed by how it ended up the way it is.
I just discovered that I missed much of the beginning. I walked into the theater during the scene where Di Caprios character is holding their baby Charlene, and Perfidia is leaving home.
But in response to your reply, I can understand the frustration. PTA can raise expectations for all of us film fans, and the results are not always predictable. I didn’t like Inherent Vice.
Oh yes, you missed the rather lengthy prologue. Quite a bit in there.
As for expectations, unlike most people, I go into PTA’s movies hoping rather than expecting. I’ve been lukewarm to negative on enough of his movies that I really never know what to expect. I haven’t liked three of his last for movies. LOL
Understood. hoping that he can make movies as good as he use to. As for his last 4 movies, didn’t like Inherent Vice and haven’t seen Licorice Pizza due to lack of interest. Interestingly though I managed to enjoy OBAA despite missing the prologue.
I did LOVE Phantom Thread. That’s one to see if you haven’t. 👍🏼
I tried twice to watch it, both times had to give up and then eventually deleted the download. Unwatchable, one-eyed, with repulsive performances, especially Penn. Spare me all the political posturing, and I say this as an anti-orange man.
I found it to be pretty bad and it has only grown worse the more I’ve thought about it. But PTA gets a lot passes. This seems to be the awards season darling.