Our Review
- Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor, Wood Harris, Alana Haim
- September 26th 2025
- 162
- Paul Thomas Anderson
Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, One Battle After Another, features Leonardo DiCaprio as a washed-up revolutionary.
As a filmmaker, Paul Thomas Anderson is a master of slow-moving understatement that gradually unfurls into something compelling.
There Will Be Blood, The Master, and Phantom Thread have enraptured his admirers, but can frustrate those seeking cinematic pyrotechnics.
One Battle After Another, a counter-culture caper that’s based on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, is a different beast. It feels like a peak-era Tarantino, but with Anderson’s more thoughtful and measured underpinnings lying beneath the irony, comedy, and action.
Initially, the focus is on Teyana Taylor’s Perfidia, a machine gun-toting revolutionary in the ‘French 75’ group. She and her partner Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) are living a transgressive dream by freeing detained immigrants and sticking it to the establishment.
A robbery gone wrong results in Perfidia’s arrest. Military stickler Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn) ends up with her in his...
