With Warner Bros on an unprecedented box office streak, the elevated action thriller One Battle After Another finally enters wide on Friday, boasting its excellent audience and critic scores out of the gate. But as Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar hopeful blows its expectations out of the water, its lackluster marketing not only might end the streak, but make an instant-classic struggle out of the gate.
But that isn’t any reason to not go see this movie as it’s one of the few that come out every year in which demand to be seen on the big screen. Whilst trying to keep pertinent details scarce and plot descriptions brief, the general gist of the film is that Leonardo DiCaprio plays a member of a far-left rebellion named the French 75, but as the rebellion ends, the fascist regime overpowers them, leading to Sean Penn’s white supremacist character forcing relations with DiCaprio’s wife. Sixteen years later, DiCaprio and his daughter are both on the run while Penn desperately needs to track him down.
From there, the story unfolds in a way that not only grips, but keeps its audience guessing while maintaining a sense of logic and excitement, making its two hour and forty minute runtime fly by. The standout is easily Sean Penn, whose character is as evil a character you’ll find in any movie in 2025, but his characterization of the character finds a balance that allows the audience to want to watch more of his arch unfold in the cat-and-mouse game he plays with DiCaprio. Penn’s Col. Steven Lockjaw explores the dynamic found within the fetishism found in racism, provoking both a thoughtful and fascinating character study on a problem brewing beneath the surface of modern alt-right politics in American society, but his character is driven by more than just his perversion, but also a quest for power, and how dehumanizing that of other demographics can provide such. While Penn hasn’t been nominated for an Academy Award in over fifteen years, it seems likely that not only will he score a Best Supporting Actor nomination, but capture his third win (Mystic River, Milk) in his sixth nomination. On the contrary, while DiCaprio likely didn’t overtake the spot of even Warner Bros best chance at winning Best Actor, he does give a classic DiCaprio performance that finds its balance between leading man movie star and character actor exceptionally well, and easily delivering his best performance since his win for The Revenant ten years ago. DiCaprio’s physicality that he wraps in his anxiety as he crashes out over the loss of his daughter is effortlessly entertaining, and always authentic in a way most actors struggle to convey. It’s a performance that could have easily been cartoonish, but is layered enough in DiCaprio’s artistic choices that makes the audience buy in to such a deeply flawed character.
Perhaps Warner Bros should have marketed the film in more of an honest way regarding how politically charged it is considering the modern societal climate, but the movie did keep its portrayals of both sides in not only in an extreme, off-the-rails manner, but one in a way where both sides of the aisle find themselves being called out for things actively going on in the real-world. Maybe it’s too of-its-time, but it’s a film that would have been seen as a gross exaggeration even ten years ago, but at times feels too on-the-nose now, and it’s one that forces society to hold its mirror up even through the fiction of it all while pulling no punches.
It’s Paul Thomas Anderson’s first foray into something contemporary since Punch Drunk Love in the early aughts, but it’s one that’s a necessary reminder that even a contemporary film can have a lot to say in a way where everybody can understand. It’s a film full of vitriol reflecting back a world full of hatred in a time where society is more divided than ever without an end in sight, and maybe that film won’t be for everybody, but it’s certainly one that wants to have a conversation. For now, the conversation becomes not will Paul Thomas Anderson finally win an Oscar, but how many will he win?
You can see One Battle After Another in theaters everywhere, including premium formats such as IMAX and Dolby Cinemas.
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