Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘One Battle After Another’ delivers volatile mix of militancy, militarization, and dark humor
Paul Thomas Anderson is hardly the first director to fuse politics, social critique, and character-driven narratives. Yet he does so with a distinctly American exceptionalist gloss, even when he leans into marvelous fabulism or magical realism.
Anderson is unafraid to pursue the improbable and, more impressively, to render it plausible. That instinct fuels One Battle After Another — a film already topping critics’ lists as the standout of 2025.
This is not, however, the typical Anderson film. Unlike the overwrought pathos of Magnolia (1999) or the pendulum-like character studies of Boogie Nights (1997), this is his most bombastic work to date, a cinematic powder keg steeped in contemporary American politics. One Battle After Another is less a story than a portrait of extremes: the militant and the militarized.
From a distance, the two are indistinguishable, each fluent in the language of violence. Anderson seizes on this ambiguity, painting in broad, forceful strokes a nation disturbingly at ease with terror from all sides.
The cast is formidable. Leonardo DiCaprio lends gravity as an aging revolutionary. Benicio Del Toro, equal parts community leader and dojo master, embodies resilience tinged with discipline but also bristling with the caricaturish seriousness of his own role among his people. Sean Penn, in a career-redefining turn, becomes Lockjaw — whose character is hilariously named Lockjaw (not a joke, that’s his last name in the movie) — a leering embodiment of fascist ambition, unnervingly fetishized even by those who dream of revolution. Regina Hall, criminally underrated for her range, delivers a performance that anchors the film’s chaos with quiet ferocity. Still, it is Penn who dominates, raging toward awards season with his raw, terrifying portrait of a man consumed by militarization.
The film is not a one-trick spectacle. Its relentless violence — enough to give Quentin Tarantino a run for his blood-soaked money — is balanced by unexpected flashes of hilarity. This tonal dexterity is the film’s greatest strength: the script. Co-written by Anderson himself, the dialogue glimmers with nuggets of absurdist brilliance that pierce the brutality. In one unforgettable sequence, Penn is subjected to a so-called “vulnerability study.” Those two words encapsulate the paradox at the film’s core. Violence becomes most palpable when interrupted by moments of fragility, when power admits its own cracks, or when tears flow behind the gun.
One Battle After Another refuses to let its audience settle. It is volatile, outrageous, and, at times, wickedly funny — a collision of militancy and militarization that blurs the line between conviction and control. If vulnerability is the one truth the film grants us, it is also the wound that ensures Anderson’s latest work will endure, destined for the canon of American cinema.
You may reach Chong Ardivilla at kartunistatonto@gmail.com or chonggo.bsky.social
