One Battle After Another ★★★★

Availability: Showing widely in theaters in the US and internationally. Streaming estimated to be available in mid- to late December. See JustWatch here for future streaming availability.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

After 16 years of living off the grid and smoking dope, former revolutionary Bob and his now-missing daughter are separately being pursued anew by the government he thought was no longer interested in them. Bob (the name an alias) is on high-anxiety alert throughout Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2:40 film, set to a background of fleeing immigrants and militarized government overreach. The mostly-wasted kinetic energy expended by Leonardo DiCaprio is both touching and comic as he frantically seeks to save his daughter, and himself—wearing the Scotch plaid bathrobe he was in when the government men broke down the door of his house-in-the-woods hideaway.

Leonardo DiCaprio as Bob—in bathrobe—trying to save himself and his daughter.

Sixteen years ago, Bob and his fellow revolutionary Perfidia (a very hot Teyana Taylor) were in love, members of the radical group French 75 (the name of a WWI cannon and cocktail), getting off on escapades of freeing immigrants from detention centers. Bob—then known as “Ghetto Pat” —set the distracting explosives and Perfidia confronted the military, guns at the ready. In deep post-partum depression after the birth of their daughter, Perfidia comes to the conclusion she’s more revolutionary than mother and takes off, leaving Pat (before he became Bob) to parent the infant. Another piece to Anderson’s story (“inspired by” Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland”) is the extreme sexual attraction between Perfidia and the man who captures her, Commanding Officer Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn).

Above, Perfidia (Teyana Taylor) doesn't let pregnancy

slow down her revolutionary activities.

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Anderson and Pynchon, on whose 1990 novel the film is loosely based, revel in characters with ambivalence. Those without it are the bad guys.

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All these characters—Bob, Perfidia, Lockjaw—have in common a double life: Bob as revolutionary/slacker and Dad, Perfidia as a committed revolutionary sexually drawn to her nemesis, and Lockjaw as white nationalist wanna-be who can’t stay away from Black women. Characters who are monolithic, like members of the white nationalist Christmas Adventurers Club, to which Lockjaw aspires to belong—he desires their excessive wealth and community with the powerful—are the bad guys.

The fateful first meeting between Perfidia (Taylor) and CO Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn)

starts with her capturing him.

One exception to the duality is a martial arts teacher or sensei (an empathetic Benicio del Toro) who is the calm (“Ocean waves, Bob, ocean waves”) to Bob’s storm, the community leader with a network of tunnels and contacts to facilitate immigrants escaping the arm of the law. Anderson and Pynchon revel in characters with ambivalence. Those without it, with a desire to return to a nostalgic vision of a static past (Ronald Reagan, MAGA, here the Christmas Adventurers Club) destroy civil society.

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Anchoring the film’s middle is a fascinating foot chase led by 3 lyrical skateboarders in profile at night on moon-lit rooftops.

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The action/comedy that is “one damn car [or other type of] chase after another” is set amidst this political milieu (for Pynchon it was Reagan’s re-election year 1984, for Anderson it’s today’s MAGAland). Beautiful cinematography of a 4-car ballet in the American Southwest closes the film, and a fascinating foot chase led by 3 lyrical skateboarders in moon-lit, rooftop profile anchors the middle. At the sensei’s direction, the skateboarders are guiding to safety the lumbering, doped-up Bob, the contrast between them both visually riveting and funny.

An ever-present tension is underscored, sometimes overpowered, by the percussive soundtrack of long-time Anderson collaborator Jonny Greenwood. Numbers like The Shirelles’ “Soldier Boy” backing Lockjaw and Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (stay for the credits) will run through your head days later.

Anderson (whose “There Will Be Blood” should have won Best Picture Oscar) brings more to the comedic side than Bob’s physical impairment from over a decade of smoking weed (and once in a while attending a parent-teacher conference). Verbal humor erupts throughout. Bob contacts his revolutionary “hot line” to get help when he’s chased out of his home by Lockjaw’s legions. Except his pothead brain can’t recall the password: “What time is it, Bob?” Unless he comes up with it, Bob won’t get the help he and his daughter need. The telephone calls between Bob (who stops at least half a dozen times to plug and unplug the charger for his burner phone) and PC Comrade Josh (“You’re violating my space. This doesn’t feel safe, Bob.”) will make you laugh out loud.

At over 2-1/2 hours, “One Battle…” is probably too long. It doesn’t need all those lengthy chase scenes, although, remarkably, the tension never lets up.

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DiCaprio is magnificent inhabiting the Pat/Bob, arsonist/Dad role, especially as the brain-addled former revolutionary he has become.

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Not only a script backed by superb cinematography and music makes “One Battle…” the best film we’ve seen in a long time. Taylor, Del Toro, Penn, and Chase Infiniti as the daughter, are all excellent, even if Penn’s Lockjaw is an overdrawn caricature. DiCaprio is magnificent inhabiting the Pat/Bob, arsonist/Dad role, especially as the brain-addled former revolutionary he has become.

Perfidia (Taylor) and Bob (DiCaprio)

have very different responses to life with an infant.

Anderson’s genius is in providing high entertainment while delving into the problematic present. Here he interrogates attraction to ideology and organization: the French 75 radicals, the Christmas Adventurers, progressive nuns in a convent. And their willingness to abandon those communities when pressed by personal needs and desires. Is everyone a “rat” to his or her cause? How does one survive a proto-fascist government determined to shut you up and shut you down?

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She says: A political film from beginning to end. Yet unlike the daily news, you won’t want to avert your eyes.

He says: You’ll laugh. And want to cry over what’s happened to your country.

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Date: 2025

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti

Runtime: 180 minutes

Country: United States

Language: English

Other Awards: 3 wins (“Location Awards”) and 2 other nominations (one for “Best Trailer”) to date