One Battle After Another

Since breaking out with Boogie Nights in 1997, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has every few years put out a new film as engrossing and spellbinding as any around. His sterling track record is well-known by cineastes and by an industry that has repeatedly taken note of his unique artistry. But he’s never won an Oscar and he’s never made something that would make him a household name among the masses. Even his biggest admirers would be remiss to call Anderson’s challenging, complex character studies mainstream entertainment. But, Anderson’s tenth and latest feature film finds him working with his biggest budget to date and one of his biggest movie stars as well. And whereas previous collaborations with Tom Cruise and Adam Sandler saw those A-listers stretching themselves to fit the filmmaker’s sensibilities (to rave reviews and commercial irrelevance), One Battle After Another simply pools the considerable talents of both Anderson and leading man Leonardo DiCaprio for a rich, bold, compelling serving of adult cinema that stands out in all the best ways. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this opens tomorrow night to what appears to be the most unanimous and robust critical approval of any film this decade.

Loosely inspired by the 1990 novel Vineland by Inherent Vice author Thomas Pynchon, Battle opens sixteen years ago with its gaze fixed on the French 75, a group of revolutionaries who have been targeting detention centers at the U.S.-Mexico border and expressing general dissatisfaction with the systems in place. Our attention is primarily upon Bob Ferguson (DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), a couple whose passion for explosive political activism spills over to their love life, something to which unsavory Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) becomes an invested third party.

After a bank heist goes awry, Perfidia is arrested and sees becoming an informant in exchange for witness protection as her only way of avoiding a decades-long prison sentence.

We then jump to the present day, in which Bob is a substance-abusing but harmless single father to Willa (Chase Infiniti), the teenage daughter he had with Perfidia. Father and daughter have been living off the grid as much as they can, relying on a single untraceable first-generation mobile phone and knowing that if a situation arises, they can count on Bob’s old network of revolutionaries to protect them.

It just so happens that a situation arises when old Lockjaw goes looking for the Fergusons and for what he believes may be his secret love child as he applies for membership into The Christmas Adventurers, a white supremacy group not nearly as jolly as their name suggests. Lockjaw’s authority and resources lead him to the (fictional) town of Baktan Cross, where both the rusty Bob and the novice Willa must now rely on estranged allies with secret codes and their own instincts to stay alive.

Reports place Battle‘s budget between $115 and $175 million, which is well over the $77 million worldwide gross of There Will Be Blood, Anderson’s highest box office performer to date. This is definitely a commercial gamble for Warner Bros. at a time when all studios have steered clear of making prestige pictures and movies for adults. Like all television, Oscar viewership has been trending down for decades and even well-received movies struggle to generate the enthusiastic word of mouth needed to find a receptive audience in that limited window before they’re dropped onto a streaming service.

DiCaprio is, like Tom Cruise and Christopher Nolan, one of the few remaining big movie icons out there who seems to pose an actual threat to these changing models and Netflix’s planned world dominance. The 50-year-old actor has been at the center of many a cultural landmark in his thirty-some years as a leading boy turned leading man: Titanic, The Departed, Inception, Django Unchained, The Revenant, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. DiCaprio’s last couple of movies extended his streak of Oscar recognition (the last year he made a movie and didn’t have a Best Picture nominee at the Oscars was 2011 when J. Edgar flopped), but they were financed by the streamers and their box office numbers were, respectively, unreported and deemed somewhat irrelevant. Battle, which is sure to extend the actor’s legacy of acclaim and at this much-too-early time seems poised to become his third Best Picture winner, will simultaneously test his drawing power and moviegoers’ appetite for thinking, low-concept genuine Cinema with a capital C.

Most would say that Anderson has never made a bad movie and I know that I’m fairly alone in my mixed feelings towards Boogie Nights. As writer, director, producer, and sometimes cinematographer, the lifelong Angeleno makes it look easy. Just pour in a lot of passion and thought, use but don’t abuse certain aspects from hallmarks of cinematic eras past, and tell a story of substance with plenty of style. It makes you wonder why every filmmaker doesn’t do it this way. But very few of them actually do. And the industry seems convinced that the demand for thoughtful, grown-up cinema is declining and I’m sure there are proprietary metrics from streaming service menu browses and double-screen views that can back those claims up.

The depressing cultural diminishment that cinema has undergone in even just the past five years makes it all the easier to appreciate and celebrate an inspired, original, subversive work like One Battle After Another. The opening act feels like the start of a different, more political film than this ends up being, but the world-building is thorough and masterful. There is appealing dark wit throughout and the comforting current of trying to make sense of a changing world. While many will declare this a timely masterpiece, and it is worth noting that this is Anderson’s first contemporary film since 2002’s Punch-Drunk Love, I do not see much in here that will date and age this film, for its themes, offbeat humor, and striking construction all seem timeless.

There is little that reflects the budget being as high as it is, even factoring in the $20 million DiCaprio reportedly took home (a savvy investment, based on his largely unrivaled track record). But if a big studio is going to give a filmmaker big checks to do what they want, who better than Anderson, whose worst film this century (Inherent Vice) still picked up an Oscar nomination for Adapted Screenplay? Anderson has repeatedly taken iffy subject matter (e.g. the founding of Scientology, a 1960s fashion designer) and turned them into resonant and compelling drama that stays with you and gets better on every repeat viewing. And he’s absolutely done that again here.

One Battle After Another in Lists:
2025, Ranked · Every Leonardo DiCaprio Movie, Ranked · Paul Thomas Anderson, Ranked