Paul Thomas Anderson is in a class of his own as a filmmaker. I don’t think there is any other director who balances tone better than he does. His films could feature some of the darkest, most disturbing moments ever put on screen and then within a single scene transition he can shift to something hilariously comical, and it still would fit together. He’s made a career out of delivering some of the darkest comedies, with movies like Boogie Nights (1997), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), and Inherit Vice (2014) on his resume. His movies have also either leaned more fully into the darker side, like There Will Be Blood (2007), or the more comical side like Licorice Pizza (2021). But one thing that remains constant in his films is a sense of keeping his audience on the edge, making sure that they’ll never know which way his films are headed. That has made him one of the most admired filmmakers still working in Hollywood today. Every new film he puts out always garners our attention, because we know that it’s going to be unlike anything we have seen before. And as a filmmaker, he’s done a lot of things that we’ve thought were impossible. He’s the guy who showed us that Adam Sandler could actually give a great performance with Punch-Drunk Love, which we’ve now learned was no fluke thanks to the Safdie Brothers several years later. Anderson has an eye for talent and visual storytelling that is truly unique, and it has earned him a strong place in the filmmaking community. However, as beloved as Anderson is among filmmakers, his reach still feels a bit limited. Because of the unusual nature of his films, his reach hasn’t really crossed into the mainstream in the same way that his contemporaries have like Quentin Tarantino or Christopher Nolan. While many of his films are big in concept and ambitious in execution, he’s still been playing with limited budgets and small art house premieres. But that seems to have changed.
For his newest film, Anderson is getting something he’s never had before; a substantial budget. With the financial backing of Warner Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson for the first time is making a film with a budget north of $100 million. Thus far, we’ve seen him be a filmmaker who has done a lot with very little in the way of funds. There Will Be Blood was one of the most impressive looking American epics of it’s time, and remarkably it was made for around $20 million. While it does excite a lot of Paul Thomas Anderson fans to think about what he might do with a budget of that size given his overall track record, it also leaves a lot of people worried about what that might mean for his style of fillmaking as well. Anderson has managed to thrive being something of an outsider from the studio system. So seeing him working with a major studio and taking their money for a film budgeted over 5x more than his average film makes many of his fans worried that he might be selling out. Will this new movie actually still feel like a Paul Thomas Anderson film, or will it be a soulless studio product? One of the positive signs is that the movie is not a pre-existing IP, but rather a project of Anderson’s own choosing. It’s a loose adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel called “Vineland” and it’s pretty clear that the reason he’s making this movie is not because he needed Warner Brothers money but rather because they wanted his new film. Warner Brothers, despite some of their own misguided steps in the past, have actually been quite good at attracting prestige filmmakers to bring their big concept projects under their banner. It’s something they did with Christopher Nolan for a while with his films Inception (2010) and Dunkirk (2017). Just this year they also got a big win with Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (2025). So, they recognize that it’s worth the investment to give a filmmaker like Paul Thomas Anderson the money he needs to make his big vision project come to life. The only question is, does One Battle After Another prove that Anderson can still deliver on a much bigger scale, or does the movie fall apart under the weight of all those lofty ambitions?
The story of One Battle After Another is set in an America that’s been living under an authoritarian, militaristic regime that has been rounding up migrants and placing them in concentration camps. Fighting back against this regime is a domestic terrorist group call the French 75. Two of the members of this group are Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor). The two revolutionaries have a fiery romance that builds while they conduct their many acts of resistance against the government. But, their love affair and antigovernmental crusade hits a roadblock once Perfidia becomes pregnant. Once their child is born, Perfidia begins to become unhinged and it results in botched raid that gets her arrested. In order to save herself, and protect her daughter’s secret identity, she ends up naming names of the other French 75 members. Bob ends up going on the run with his infant daughter, who will grow up believing that her mother died in prison. 16 years later, the young girl named Willa (Chase Infiniti) finds herself suddenly thrust into the chaotic world of her father’s past once an old adversary has picked up the trail. Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), an old enemy of the French 75 has now been given new authority to hunt down the remnants of the revolutionary group, and he’s got a personal matter involving Willa herself that he wants to settle once and for all. While Bob is still very protective of his daughter, he’s also been out of the revolutionary game for many years, so a lot of his instincts are rusty. He ends up seeking help from Willa’s karate teacher Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio Del Toro), who himself is involved in his own underground resistance movement. As Willa becomes the target of this government crackdown, it becomes an endless race between two highly opposed forces; Bob using his network of revolutionaries to help him find his daughter’s safe house refuge, and Lockjaw using his military back might to get to her first. And all the while, Willa desperately is trying to adapt to all the chaotic events that suddenly have been thrusted upon her. With all that happens, it’s clear why this movie comes to us with the title One Battle After Another.
There is a lot that unfolds within the story of One Battle, but at the same time, the movie is very simple in it’s narrative. In the end, it’s just a story about a father doing everything he can to save his daughter from a ruthless predator and the system that has propelled him to power. A lot of people who have been worried that some of Paul Thomas Anderson’s style would get lost under the weight of a much bigger budget will be rest assured that this movie thankfully still feels like an Anderson film to it’s core. It’s honestly kind of surprising that this movie actually cost as much as it did to make, because Paul Thomas Anderson doesn’t really do much to flaunt the budget of this movie. It still feels like one of his grounded, street level films that were made on significantly smaller budgets. If expensive visual effects were used in the making of this movie, they are barely noticeable as the movie still feels like a very hand crafted film. But, regardless of how the budget was used, this is undoubtedly another triumph for Paul Thomas Anderson. It features all of the incredible filmmaking instincts that have made him one of our more exciting cinematic storytellers over the years, with perhaps a bit more scale to it. I would also say that as entertaining as the film is, it also feels a bit slack in it’s pacing, especially compared to some of his much tighter films like There Will Be Blood and Punch-Drunk Love. While the overall experience is still thrilling, you can feel at times when it slips into indulgence, which has hurt Anderson’s films sometimes. But, it’s a minor nitpick on the film, because when the movie does get cooking it is an amazing thrill ride. Again, Anderson’s skill with balancing tonal shifts is unmatched, and he does that a lot here. At times you will be laughing hysterically at the absurdity going on in the film, and then a scene later the film will hit you with a gut punch of tension and gut-wrenching tragedy. In many ways, that’s the biggest asset that this film has, because it is constantly leaving you unsure about what’s going to happen next, which is thrilling in it’s own way. It’s a movie that only he can make, and that’s a rare specialty in cinema these days, especially when done on this scale.
What I especially love about what Paul Thomas Anderson does in One Battle After Another is the subtle world-building. While there certainly are a lot of parallels in the film with regards to the state of the world today, the movie also creates this heightened world that only these kinds of characters could exist in. The shadowy government organizations feel familiar to us, but Anderson also puts his own absurdist spin on them as well, making their secret organization a joke in of itself. I also like how the revolutionary groups have become so entrenched in their routines, that their code speak way of communications has over time devolved into something like trying to reach customer service through a corporation’s hotline. Everything is grounded and yet heightened at the same time. There will probably be some discussion around this film that may make it controversial. Certainly the mass incarceration of migrant people (primarily Latin American migrants as shown prominently in the film) is going to draw immediate parallels with the current situation in America. Also the movie isn’t afraid to define the characters in clear black and white terms; the revolutionaries are definitely the good guys here and the white supremacists coded government figures are the bad guys. The timing of this movie couldn’t be more prescient. And yet, Anderson doesn’t use this movie to push any agenda either. It’s merely the backdrop for this cat and mouse chase involving DiCaprio’s Bob, his daughter Willa, and Sean Penn’s Col. Lockjaw. I do love that Anderson shows restraint here, because I can imagine this movie loosing all of it’s subtlety if it were given over to a less skilled storyteller. Anderson certainly wants you to think about the injustices committed in this world and be conscientious, but at the same time he knows that the story must be engaging enough to guide us through this crazy world, and that’s why it remains focused on above all else. It’s the thing that we all will engage with the most on our first watch of the movie, but I’m sure all the extra world details will help to make people want to revisit the film many times over in order to really absorb the world that Anderson created for this film.
The thing that I’m sure most people are going to take away from watching this movie are the performances. Anderson has always been a great actor’s director, and he’ helped many of his performers deliver some of the greatest work of their careers. He helped launch Mark Wahlberg’s career with Boogie Nights, showed us a different side of Tom Cruise in Magnolia (1999), made us believe in Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love, and got Daniel Day-Lewis the second of his three Oscars for There Will Be Blood. Now, for the first time he gets to work with one of the greatest actors of his generation, Leonardo DiCaprio, and the long awaited team up does not disappoint. What I especially love is how loose Anderson allowed DiCaprio to be in this movie. One of DiCaprio’s most under-utilized talents as an actor has been his knack for comedy, which we’ve seen used only sparingly in Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). Thankfully, Paul Thomas Anderson uses DiCaprio’s comedic chops to great effect here. It’s especially hilarious watching how clumsily DiCaprio’s Bob steps back into the revolutionary game after so many years out of loop, and his growing frustrations with how the network operates now as opposed to when he was in his prime. DiCaprio has some pretty spectacular freak-outs in this character role, and a lot of the fun of this movie stems from his character. But, the true scene-stealer is Sean Penn as Col. Lockjaw. This is one of Penn’s best performances ever, and that’s saying a lot for the two time Oscar winner. His Lockjaw is a true transformative performance. There are so many layers to this character that Sean Penn brilliantly gets to peel back. I love how his tough guy exterior is so extreme that all it does is spotlight his insecurities that much more. I especially love that Penn even worked out a unusual gait to the way Lockjaw walks, like every muscle in his body is clenched at all times. And he’s also not afraid to make Lockjaw as loathsome as he possibly can be, and that in a way makes him even more absurd of a figure. This is the kind of performance that I’m sure we’re going to be hearing a lot about come Awards season. The movie also gives us a breakout performance from Chase Infiniti as Willa. This is her first ever film role, and it is an impressive debut. She has to carry so much of the film given that so much of it centers around her character, and she manages to have an incredible on screen presence for someone fairly new to this. It’s especially impressive, given that she’s able to command the screen even in the presence of heavyweights like DiCaprio and Penn. And while their roles are minor in comparison, Teyana Taylor and Benicio Del Toro also manage to shine in their performances as well. In addition, like with so many other Anderson films, even the side characters have a ton of personality.
One thing that Paul Thomas Anderson has never failed to deliver on is making his movies look good. He always works with the best cinematographers in the business, and the production designs on his movies are always incredibly detailed. He’s also been a purist when it comes to shooting his movies on film. He’s worked with 70 mm photography on many of his past films, but with One Battle After Another he decided to do something different. Here he’s working with 35mm film, but he shot the movie utilizing a Vistavision camera. Vistavision is experiencing a rather surprising resurgence lately after going unused for decades in Hollywood. A precursor of the IMAX process, Vistavision allowed for larger image captures on 35mm film stock by running the film horizontally through the shutter of the camera rather than vertically. This allowed for an image that was 8 perforations wide rather than the standard 4, making the image captured twice as sharp and large as usual. Over time, the format went out of style, but gained attention again last year thanks to the Oscar winning camera work on Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist (2024). While The Brutalist used Vistavision for parts of the film, Anderson made use of it for the entire movie. The result is really impressive, as it give the movie some really breathtaking visual flair. While Anderson doesn’t go overboard with the photography, he nevertheless allows for the Vistavision image to do interesting things with depth of field and focus in many shots. There is a spectacular sequence involving a car chase near the end of the movie that is one of the most breathtaking uses of camera work I’ve seen in a while. The placement of the camera in that sequence is truly inspired. Anderson is working with cinematographer Michael Bauman for the second time after their collaboration on Licorice Pizza, and this is his most dynamic camera work that we’ve seen yet. Another excellent part of this movie is the musical score from Jonny Greenwood. The Radiohead band member turned film composer has written music for every Anderson film since There Will Be Blood, and this is yet another brilliant piece of work from him. The score at times plays like a heartbeat that just keeps pounding through the movie, driving up the tension. It’s minimalist in the right ways, at times only consisting of one note played over and over again, but it perfectly fits with the chaos that’s unfolding on screen. Both of these elements, combined with a film production that still feels hand crafted and lived in really helps to show that even with a larger budget at his disposal, Paul Thomas Anderson still can craft a film that feels distinctively him.
While I still hold a couple of Paul Thomas Anderson movies above this one, especially There Will Be Blood which is one of my favorite movies in general, I can definitely say that this is one of the year’s best films. It’s just great to see one of cinema’s greatest talents still taking chances as a filmmaker and coming out with his integrity as an artist still in check. It will hopefully bode well for filmmakers in general if this movie does very well at the box office, because it will allow the major studios to see the value in giving filmmakers like Anderson the money they need to make their big original concept films knowing that there is an audience out there for them. Not every filmmaker manages to do that working under the judemental eye of studio executives. But Anderson has built a respected reputation over the years as a filmmaker, one that only a fool would try to stand in the way of in Hollywood, and it’s great to see a studio like Warner Brothers recognizing that too. They know that Paul Thomas Anderson can deliver on his promises as a filmmaker, and that’s why they allowed him to have the budget that he needed for this film. As someone who has enjoyed many of his films, it is great to see Paul Thomas Anderson succeed so well in maintaining his unique cinematic voice while working within the studio system. It may be a costlier movie, but it still maintains his signature to it’s core. The performances are certainly worth the ticket price alone, especially with Sean Penn’s completely transformative work here. And there is some thrilling camera work on display as well. It will be interesting to see what kind of replay value this movie has with audiences over time. I’m certainly eager to see it again, hopefully to catch all the things I missed the first time. And thanks to the Vistavision photography, this is a movie that demands to be seen on a big screen. I caught it in IMAX, and it made the experience all the more immersive. That aforementioned car chase is especially breathtaking on a true IMAX screen. But even so, this is a Paul Thomas Anderson movie that is indeed going to please his long time fans, while also at the same time hopefully drawing in a few new ones. He’s a one of a kind filmmaker who certainly deserves more attention, and while One Battle After Another may not be his magnum opus, it is still a masterpiece that hopefully will add onto his already legendary status in Hollywood.
Rating: 9/10