Plugging away at what's shaping up to be a busy fall movie season, it's time to review the latest from Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another!
Based on the 1990 Thomas Pynchon novel Vineland, PTA's tenth film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Teyana Taylor and newcomer Chase Infiniti. Leo and Teyana are Pat Calhoun and Perfidia Beverly Hills, members of a far-left revolutionary group called the French 75, who run rescue operations for incarcerated undocumented immigrants, rob banks, and conduct after-hours bombings of financial and political offices. The couple has a child together but Perfidia is arrested during a botched bank heist, and Pat and their daughter Charlene are forced to go into hiding. Sixteen years later their past catches up with them when a military squad begins hunting down the remaining French 75 members.
I won't divulge more plot than that, as the trailer leaves vague all but what I mentioned above; this film is better experienced without knowing much. Suffice to say PTA has loosely adapted this Reagan-era story for the 2020s and created a powderkeg of a film, a blend of piano-wire-taut suspense, absurdist comedy, and biting political satire.
The DiCaprio character often calls to mind how Jeffrey Lebowski might behave as a washed-up revolutionary (which I suppose he was, having co-authored the original Port Huron statement); in way over his head and incapable of remembering the group's codespeak (the script has a lot of fun with this). Now going by the name Bob Ferguson, DiCaprio's character has raised his daughter Charlene (now Willa) to the best of his limited ability, but if anything she takes care of him now. DiCaprio is always dramatically and comedically inventive as characters on the edge and he brings some of the same charm here as in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - a buffoon who manages to get his shit together despite himself.
Meanwhile Col. Steven Lockjaw, the military commander the French 75 ran afoul of sixteen years earlier, is secretly on the hunt for Bob and Willa, employing his own squad, plus a bounty hunter (How very Darth Vaderish of him...). Sean Penn delivers some of the best work of his career, playing Lockjaw as both truly fearsome and sadistic but also kind of pathetic, a man very obviously masking deep-seated insecurities. There's an incredible precision to his performance; note the facial mannerisms and his odd gait that looks like he's squeezing one out. Penn is a show-stealer here.
One of the other standouts is Chase Infiniti as Willa; despite this being her first film she covers a lot of range and really embodies this firebrand of a character, a fountain of conflicted feelings about her drug addict father and the mother she never knew. Infiniti expresses a ton just with a facial expression.
OBAA is one of those great films that's hard to describe due to its myriad complexities and details; but like PTA's masterpiece There Will Be Blood, it defies easy categorization but will definitely reward multiple viewings. Longtime PTA collaborator Jonny Greenwood supplies yet another fantastic, mood-enhancing score, while relative newbie cinematographer Michael Bauman brings to life one of the most visually creative car chase sequences this side of a Mad Max film.
Between stellar performances, atmospheric music, engaging camerawork, and thought-provoking sociopolitical commentary, One Battle After Another is PTA's best film since TWBB and a shoe-in for numerous well-deserved Oscar nods. It's one of the best films of 2025, and I look forward to repeat viewings.
I give OBAA **** out of ****.
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