Rent One Battle After Another (2025)

A Fantastic Film. - One Battle After Another review by GI

One of the reasons a cinephile watches so many films is the eternal hope that everyone is a masterpiece like this one. Director Paul Thomas Anderson has given us a modern action thriller, thematically layered, comic, surreal almost, and an accurate condemnation of the Trump era America. This is a film that delves into the counter-culture and paranoid extremes of American politics (and arguably the world situation too!) with the farcical aspects of modern life thrown in making it have the edge of a screwball yet deadly serious drama. Leonardo DiCaprio in probably his best role to date plays Bob, who is a member of an American revolutionary group who launch attacks on migrant detention camps freeing the migrants, as well as setting off bombs in the buildings of the wealthy right wing establishment. He is in love with Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), the committed leader of their group. She becomes the obsession of the racist, ramrod, chin strutting soldier Colonel Lockjaw, who wants to hunt her down but also is uncomfortably sexually aroused by her. When a bank robbery goes wrong the group has to go into hiding and Perfidia disappears leaving her baby with Bob. The narrative jumps fifteen years and Bob is now a drug fuelled alcoholic but devoted to his daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti). But when Lockjaw closes in on them fuelled by his desire to join a far right secretive ruling class club that gives him his orders and that wants Bob and all his old comrades eliminated poor old befuddled Bob has to go on the run and rescue his daughter (aided by Benicio Del Toro, in a great and funny performance) who Lockjaw has a murderous plan for. The film is a thrilling mix of serious and unserious that captures the sheer whimsical yet frightening nature of modern society especially in the USA. The film is really about the unending culture war that rages picking up modern themes around parent/child relationships (and very neatly connecting us to the vile separation of parents from their children by the Trump Administration attempting to deal with the Mexican border migration issues). This is a film about dissent and about being almost powerless to react with so many modern distractions. It's also about the use of violence and military power to control. In short it's a fantastic film that may divide audiences but it's powerful, clever and thoroughly entertaining throughout.

Full Tilt PTA: Cinema Doesn’t Get Better - One Battle After Another review by griggs

Now and then, a film arrives that makes the rest of the year feel ordinary. One Battle After Another is that film. Fierce, funny, and politically astute, it belongs in the same breath as Magnolia and There Will Be Blood. For me, it completes Anderson’s set of masterworks, proof that he can balance sweep and intimacy, fury and wit, with unshakable command.

The cast is astonishing. Leonardo DiCaprio sheds his star persona to serve the film. Sean Penn delivers perhaps the most physical, nuanced turn of his career — towering and vulnerable at once. Benicio Del Toro matches him in a quieter register, while Regina Hall brings bite, Teyana Taylor adds spark, and newcomer Chase Infiniti grounds key moments with quiet force. Not a weak link in sight.

Jonny Greenwood’s score is restless and propulsive, echoing the story’s turbulence without drowning it. Shot in 70mm VistaVision, the film looks monumental, every frame scaled to match its ambition.

Even the humour lands — sly, absurd, and sharp, with flashes reminiscent of the Coens at their darkest. To hold levity and rage together this deftly is rare. This is cinema at full tilt: urgent, unmissable, and built to last.

Dull and weird - One Battle After Another review by cr

Again i am amazed by the hysterical over the top positive reviews this has got.

Leo plays a paranoid revolutionary (is there any other type?) trying to right the worlds wrongs by robbing and blowing up banks and freeing the oppressed.

In comes sean penn in a weird twitchy performance as his arch nemesis and he kidnaps his daughter to do a dna test to see if she is his daughter. Leo tries to get her back.

This is played out over a long and boring 2.5 hours with the usual awful background music which is played over the dialogue.

For half an hour in the middle it sounds like someone is taking a sledgehammer to a piano.

Too long far too weird and i couldnt help thinking what was the point of it all.

Not for me.