‘One Battle After Another’ review: Leonardo DiCaprio powers Paul Thomas Anderson’s gripping thriller

Dir/scr: Paul Thomas Anderson. US. 2025. 162mins 

Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson sets his extreme characters on a collision course in One Battle After Another, a violent showdown between warring ideologies that ensnares two generations. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as a former revolutionary gone soft who must protect his daughter from a vindictive military man determined to destroy them. This audacious action-thriller is the filmmaker’s most purely entertaining vehicle, but underneath its adrenalised set pieces are quieter concerns about how best to make lasting change in a corrupt world.

Anderson creates an electric environment

Opening in the UK and US on September 26, One Battle carries a hefty price tag and represents something of a commercial risk for Warner Bros considering the picture is not based on existing intellectual property (though it is loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland). Still, DiCaprio remains a huge box-office draw, and Anderson’s arthouse cachet should attract discriminating viewers. The action-packed drama also looks likely to benefit from strong reviews and major awards buzz. 

DiCaprio plays Bob who, as the film begins, is part of The French 75, a militant revolutionary group dedicated to overthrowing the US government. During a successful raid on a detention centre, Bob’s lover and literal partner in crime, Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), mocks the manhood of commanding officer Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), an exaggeratedly macho right-wing colonel. Furious at being humiliated, Lockjaw makes it his mission to bring the group to justice — especially Perfidia, who becomes pregnant with Bob’s child. 

Roughly 16 years and several key plot twists later, One Battle shifts the setting to a sleepy small town where Bob now resides with his teen daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti), both of them laying low to avoid the authorities. But Lockjaw has lost none of his fervour to find them. 

Anderson crafted visually arresting set pieces in There Will Be Blood and riveting action sequences for Inherent Vice, but One Battle’s multiple car chases and shootouts prove more muscular and thrilling. Backed by frequent collaborator Jonny Greenwood’s tense score, the filmmaker creates an electric environment as these young revolutionaries stage daring bank robberies and random bombings. Anderson invites the audience to be seduced by their anarchic spirit as Bob and Perfidia passionately make love when they are not attacking the pillars of what they perceive to be a fascist power structure (we meet white-supremacy cabals and cruel anti-immigrant task forces over the course of the picture). The camerawork ripples with energy, and editor Andy Jurgensen keeps the story hurtling forward at a dizzying clip.

But once One Battle jumps forward in time, the tempo readjusts, finding Bob now stoned and paranoid, his once-fiery rhetoric replaced with a burnout jitteriness as he wastes away on the couch. Willa has a million questions about the mother she never knew, but her father’s vague answers only drive more of a wedge between them. Nonetheless, he has good reason to insist that they remain on high alert — once Lockjaw reappears, the cat-and-mouse games begin anew.  

DiCaprio continues a fascinating recent trend – begun with Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and Killers Of The Flower Moon – of playing fundamentally weak men who mistakenly believe they have greatness in them. Bob starts off as a wild-eyed rebel, but Perfidia’s family (who have a long history with America’s revolutionary movement) sense he lacks the mettle to back up his posturing. One Battle supports their suspicion, and Bob must eventually dig deep within himself to locate the hero he has always pretended to be.

The performance is partly comic, even pathetic, although the humour doesn’t always land. (Bob’s encounters with Benicio Del Toro’s quirky sensei are a tad too broad). But the character’s lost-and-refound idealism leads to some terrific third-act action scenes, while hinting at the ways that youthful activism can curdle in adulthood resulting in cynicism and bitterness.

The supporting cast excels at portraying these pungent personalities. Penn’s monstrous Lockjaw emerges as a racist, horny creep whose personal grudge against Perfidia takes on demented, almost demonic proportions. Taylor is like a stick of dynamite as Perfidia, her sexual appetite equal to her hunger for revolution. Bob may want to be a leader but Perfidia is the real deal, and Taylor’s magnetic, unpredictable turn builds on the promise of her remarkable work in 2023’s A Thousand And One.

As for newcomer Infiniti, she becomes a crucial element in One Battle’s second half. Willa may not remember Perfidia, but Infiniti suggests how alike mother and daughter are, two generations joined in an ongoing fight for a better tomorrow that Anderson celebrates while chronicling the toll it takes on those who wage that war.