One Battle After Another Review: Rebels, Romance, & A Madcap War Dance With Leonardo DiCaprio

Title: One Battle After Another

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Chase Infiniti, Benicio Del Toro, Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall

Where: In theatres near you

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is less a dystopian epic and more a cinematic dare: can one juggle satire, tragedy, thriller, and allegory without spilling popcorn? Set in a hazily contemporary America that feels both past and near-future, the film pretends to be about revolutionaries but is really about futility. The ragtag French 75 group, armed with bombs, rhetoric, and delusions of grandeur, try to destabilize the regime, but the true disruption comes from something far less revolutionary: a child who becomes both burden and beacon. What follows is not quite Orwell, not quite Tarantino, but something uniquely Anderson: a tragicomic ride where the revolution falters, the family takes centre stage, and the audience is never quite sure whether to laugh, wince, or lean closer.

If you leave the cinema wondering whether Anderson has stitched together a fever dream or a family saga disguised as a guerrilla manual, rest assured, that is precisely the point.

Actors’ performance

The casting is half the fun, and occasionally the salvation, of this sprawling tale. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bob, once the group’s fireworks man, has curdled into a hapless, bathrobe-wearing father who cannot remember his own code words. It is DiCaprio’s loosest, funniest turn in years, an antidote to his usual heroic brooding. Opposite him, Sean Penn plays Colonel Lockjaw (yes, that is the name) with such stone-faced ferocity that one wonders if he borrowed his scowl from a granite quarry. Yet Penn resists parody; his repressed vulnerability turns a potential caricature into a tragic figure. At the centre, Teyana Taylor’s Perfidia commands the screen with uncompromising steeliness, a charismatic leader who is both muse and menace. Around them swirl oddball delights: Benicio del Toro as a martial-arts instructor turned reluctant revolutionary, and Chase Infiniti as Willa, the daughter who becomes the film’s emotional heart.

Music

If the plot occasionally veers into chaos, Jonny Greenwood’s score keeps it ticking with metronomic menace, equal parts avant-garde anxiety and pulse-quickening propulsion; It’s eccentric, unnerving, and somehow perfect. Anderson’s visual grammar, aided by Michael Bauman’s cinematography, is lush yet gritty, weaving a grunge-1970s aesthetic with Antonioni-like expanses. Cars careen across hills in existential chases, close-ups suffocate with intimacy, and even the most ridiculous moments are shot with hypnotic elegance. The tonal whiplash, from bureaucratic absurdities to tragic revelations, feels deliberate, as if Anderson is winking at the audience, whispering: “This is serious, but do not take it too seriously.”

FPJ verdict

One Battle After Another is messy, ambitious, and oddly moving, a film that weaponizes absurdity to underline how fragile revolutions, families, and nations can be. Some may find its tonal gymnastics exhausting, while others may relish its refusal to stay in one box. What lingers is not the explosions or conspiracies but the absurd ordinariness of its characters fumbling through extraordinary times. By the time Bob swaps ideology for fatherhood, Anderson has slipped us a sly moral: perhaps the true revolution is not overthrowing regimes but choosing to care, stubbornly, in a world designed to stamp that out.

Overall, the film is not flawless, but it is unforgettable. A contemporary classic? Maybe.