One Battle After Another hit theaters on Friday. Paul Thomas Anderson's 10th film, and the first that takes place in the present day since Punch Drunk Love (which came out in 2002), is a whallop of a movie. It's an unpredictable roller-coaster ride that tackles some tough subject matter, yet it isn't a tough pill to swallow. If you ask me (and you're the one reading this, so you are), it's probably my favorite movie of the year.
If it were up to me, you'd see One Battle After Another on the biggest screen possible. There are no superheroes battling to save the world here, nor is this movie packed with CGI-infused action sequences. Thanks to the film formats it was released in, including VistaVision and 70mm Imax, it's a beautiful thing to behold. The characters, story, pacing and tone sync together perfectly to make this a unique film experience that is well worth the price of admission.
Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Bob Ferguson, a washed-up revolutionary and former member of the gang known as the French 75. He ditches explosives for diapers once his girlfriend and fellow revolutionary Perfidia (Teyana Taylor) gives birth. And when she decides to continue her life of crime, Bob and his daughter Charlene go on the run and live under the radar. And there they stay until the past comes back to haunt them -- launching father and daughter on an unrelenting, erratic race for survival.
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Leonardo DiCaprio's Bob Ferguson goes on the run with his young daughter. Warner Bros.
A decade and a half after leaving the French 75, Bob's let himself go. Weed and terrible decisions put his teenage daughter, who now goes by the name Willa (played by Chase Infiniti in her big-screen debut), in a resentful caregiver role. Bob is strict where he needs to be and has trained her for certain emergency situations -- even though she really doesn't know his past or the truth about her estranged mother.
The demons Bob has been keeping at bay resurface in the form of a vengeful, cantankerous law enforcement officer named Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn). When he and his team arrive on Bob's doorstep, the action truly kicks off and forces Bob into the biggest fight of his life.
One Battle After Another feels like a living, breathing thing. The movie's raw unpredictability permeates it, which isn't a new aesthetic for Anderson. But this release feels like a personal achievement. When you consider that he's been developing it for over two decades, that makes perfect sense.
Teyana Taylor stars as Perfidia in One Battle After Another. Warner Bros.
Cinematically speaking, One Battle After Another has this timeless vibe in that it very much feels like a product of 2025, yet thanks to the VistaVision camera equipment -- a widescreen 35mm film format that was brought out of retirement -- there's a Hitchcockian quality in many of the sequences. This all clicks, considering the fact that Hitchcock's classic thriller Vertigo was shot on the format.
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