{"id":13108,"date":"2025-09-27T12:04:57","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T16:04:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=13108"},"modified":"2025-11-11T11:49:45","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T16:49:45","slug":"one-battle-after-another","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/09\/27\/one-battle-after-another\/","title":{"rendered":"One Battle After Another"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"One Battle After Another<\/strong> (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 162 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (pervasive language, violence, sexual content, drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Paul Thomas Anderson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jonny Greenwood\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Michael Bauman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 26, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti, Alana Haim, Wood Harris, Shayna McHayle, Paul Grimstad, Dijon Duenas, Tony Goldwyn, Starletta DuPois, D.W. Moffett, Kevin Tighe, Jim Downey, John Hoogenakker, Eric Schweig, Brooklyn Trueheart, Dan Charlton, April Grace, Jena Malone (voice).<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0One Battle After Another<\/strong> is another winner for Paul Thomas Anderson, the guy behind two of the best films of the 90s, Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999). After a string of losers- The Master (2012), Inherent Vice (2014) and Phantom Thread (2017)- he bounced back mightily with the oddball rom-com Licorice Pizza (2021).<\/p>\n

\u00a0PTA continues his winning streak with the propulsive One Battle After Another<\/strong>, his most ambitious piece since Magnolia. It is, in a word, outstanding. It\u2019s very much a movie for our time with the themes it covers (e.g. racial erasure, anti-immigrant fervor, white supremacy) yet it never feels angry or pissed off. It doesn\u2019t even take sides, not really. That\u2019s not what PTA is going for here. Instead of weighing things down with a lot of unnecessary self-importance, he keeps thing relatively playful by giving us a protagonist reminiscent of The Dude from The Big Lebowski.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Leonardo DiCaprio (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) plays Bob Ferguson, a member of a far-left revolutionary group called The French 75. In the film\u2019s opening sequence, they raid an immigrant detention center on the US-Mexico border. They liberate the detainees and lock up all the soldiers. Bob\u2019s partner Perfidia Beverly Hills (Taylor, A Thousand and One) takes things further by forcing the commanding officer Steven Lockjaw (Penn, Milk) to sexually gratify himself at gunpoint. He becomes obsessed with her. They have a sexual tryst that results in her getting pregnant.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Sixteen years later, the group is largely gone. They\u2019re either dead or on the run. Bob falls into the latter category. He lives off the grid in a sanctuary city with the now-teenage Willa (Infiniti, Presumed Innocent) who he considers his daughter. She\u2019s opinionated and strong-willed just like her mama who disappeared shortly after being forced to rat out her comrades by Lockjaw. Now a captain, he\u2019s been invited to join a secret cabal of wealthy and powerful white supremacists. But first, he has to get rid of all evidence of his relations with a black woman. That means doing away with Willa.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Lockjaw manages to find her and sets in motion a violent plan to capture her. Luckily, she\u2019s rescued by one of her mother\u2019s old friends, Deandra (Hall, Support the Girls). Bob, who receives a warning to get out of Dodge, wants to reunite with Willa. The problem is he can\u2019t remember the password when he calls the French 75 hotline for help. All those years of drinking and smoking weed have taken their toll. He gets into jam after jam as tries to find his daughter. She has her troubles as well.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As the end credits rolled, I was talking to my movie buddy Chris about PTA. I explained to him that he likes to paint his stories on a large canvas. That\u2019s definitely true with One Battle After Another<\/strong> which is actually being shown in IMAX in some theaters. It\u2019s a big story with a lot of moving parts yet PTA never loses control of it even in its wilder moments. The narrative isn\u2019t one those that go in a straight line from point A to the final destination. It takes a few detours, but it never gets lost. PTA knows exactly where he\u2019s going and how he wants to get there. Some will invariably say it\u2019s too long and rambling; I say that\u2019s part of the movie\u2019s appeal. It has a shambling, shaggy dog quality that makes it stand out among the titles turned out by the Hollywood factory. It never feels long or belabored despite running close to 2 and \u00be hours.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Is it too early to make Oscar predictions? That\u2019s a rhetorical question, of course. I would like see both DiCaprio and Penn nominated for their amazing performances. DiCaprio brings a shaggy, goofball quality to his character, a paranoid stoner who can\u2019t seem to win for losing. Where some men will stop at nothing to save their loved one, he keeps running into roadblocks in his quest. He finds a sidekick in Sergio (Toro, Traffic), his daughter\u2019s martial arts instructor and a staunch advocate for the local immigrant community. He brings comic relief to the proceedings.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Penn is the one I\u2019m really rooting for. He plays a character who\u2019s equal parts vile and ridiculous. He says and does awful things, but he looks stupid doing them. He walks around all stiff and serious, flexing his muscles and growling his lines, but anybody can see he\u2019s an idiot and a dangerous one to boot. He\u2019s a guy thirsty for power and he doesn\u2019t mind erasing history to get it. It\u2019s the actor\u2019s best performance in a long time. It could very well nab him his third Academy Award.<\/p>\n

\u00a0All of the performances in One Battle After Another<\/strong> are great, but I\u2019d like to give a special shout-out to Infiniti. This is her first movie role. She crushes it as Willa, an intelligent and resourceful teen who refuses to give in to fear even with a creep like Lockjaw getting right in her face.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Based loosely on the 1990 novel Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, who also wrote Inherent Vice, One Battle After Another<\/strong> is absolutely brilliant. PTA, who also wrote the screenplay, successfully updates the book which was set in Reagan-era California. He\u2019s made it both timely and relevant not to mention entertaining. I\u2019ll grant that it\u2019s a lot to take in. I\u2019m seriously considering a second viewing so I can absorb more of it. It\u2019s the best film I\u2019ve seen all year.\"\"<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One Battle After Another (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 162 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (pervasive language, violence, sexual content, drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Paul Thomas Anderson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jonny Greenwood\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Michael Bauman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 26, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti, Alana Haim, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13121,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/One-Battle-After-Another-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C775&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13108"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13123,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13108\/revisions\/13123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}