by ECI Released : 2025-10-03
One Battle After Another is directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and stars Leonardo DiCaprio as “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun, a washed-up ex-revolutionary living off-the-grid, and Sean Penn as Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, the ruthless military officer who hunts him and his daughter. The cast is rounded out by Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, and Teyana Taylor, all adding depth and edge to Anderson’s sprawling, dystopian epic.
Adapted loosely from Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, the film feels like the fever dream of a counterculture that never quite died. Anderson channels his trademark controlled chaos into a world of revolutionaries, bounty hunters, and secret societies, filtered through DiCaprio’s deeply haunted performance. DiCaprio captures both the paranoia and tenderness of a man crushed by ideology, while Penn gives one of his most menacing turns in years. Del Toro’s serene moral compass and Hall’s fierce presence balance out the madness.
Visually, this might be Anderson’s most audacious work yet. Shot in VistaVision, it’s drenched in hazy desert light and deep, saturated color that evokes both 1970s newsreels and modern dystopia. Jonny Greenwood’s score, oscillating between distorted strings and vintage synths, turns each set piece into something hypnotic.
At 162 minutes, One Battle After Another runs long. The middle act lingers perhaps too much on Pat’s hazy paranoia at the expense of the electric first hour, which teems with revolutionary energy and sharply drawn characters. I found myself wishing for more time in those flashbacks—more of the French 75, the chaos, the fire. Still, the third act ties it all together with emotional precision and jaw-dropping set pieces.
It’s bold, messy, funny, and deeply human—one of the year’s best films, and absolutely worth seeing at a drive-in near you.
