"One Battle After Another" Is PT Anderson’s Revolutionary Inferno

Few directors working today command the screen like Paul Thomas Anderson. From the sprawling mosaic of Magnolia to the operatic fury of There Will Be Blood and the icy romantic precision of Phantom Thread, Anderson has made a career out of crafting films that feel both timeless and urgent. With his tenth feature, One Battle After Another, he once again proves why his name belongs in the pantheon of modern auteurs.

Adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, the film could not arrive at a more combustible moment in American history. It follows a band of left-wing revolutionaries whose radical actions collide head-on with Trump-era immigration politics, exposing a country splintered by ideology. Anderson threads the needle between political satire and taut action thriller, using his camera with surgical mastery. Every shot feels alive, each sequence calibrated to sting as much as it dazzles.

At the center of the chaos is Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio, unhinged yet strangely tender), a brilliant but self-destructive radical who now lives in seclusion with his daughter Willa (rising newcomer Chase Infiniti). His former partner in crime and love, Perfidia Beverly Hills (a sensational Teyana Taylor), once set America ablaze with their shared acts of rebellion. But after she is captured and coerced into betraying the group to the enigmatic French 75, their partnership shatters. Bob retreats into drugs, alcohol, and paranoia, while Perfidia disappears from his life—until their past comes roaring back.

That reckoning arrives in the form of Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn, all menace and sleaze), a disgraced military man with a vendetta. Once infatuated with Perfidia, Lockjaw now seeks revenge against Bob and acceptance into a shadowy extremist circle. Alongside him, a rogues’ gallery emerges: Benicio Del Toro as a martial arts-obsessed guardian of immigrant families, Tony Goldwyn as a calculating politician, Regina Hall as a sharp-eyed member of the cause , and Wood Harris grounding the chaos with soulful gravitas.

What could have easily slipped into caricature instead blooms into razor-edged allegory. Anderson embraces Pynchon’s eccentricity while grounding the narrative in intimate character work. Taylor, in particular, continues her impressive ascent, matching DiCaprio’s feral energy beat for beat.

Bold, biting, and unexpectedly poignant, One Battle After Another feels both of its time and eerily prophetic. It’s another masterstroke from Paul Thomas Anderson—fiery cinema that challenges, entertains, and refuses to let go.

Final Grade : A

One Battle After Another opens in theaters tomorrow.