One Battle After Another

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson. 

2025

14 October 2025

See

Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) a revolutionary with subversive group the French 75, liberates illegal immigrants from captivity, robs banks to redistribute wealth, and generally blows shit up and hooks up with baddie (as the kids say mean bad bitch not villain) Perfidia (Teyana Taylor). They have a baby together, but she’s ill suited to motherhood, preferring to keep the resistance going. It’s crushed by Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn) who hunts members of their cell down. 16 years later and still in hiding Bob and daughter Willia (Chase Infiniti) must go on the run again.

Think

He’s diminished and bumbling, she’s clueless about her parents past life, but they get by with a little help from their friends, Deandra (Regina Hall) and Sensei Sergio St Carlos (Benicio Del Toro). 

Feel

Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA) doesn’t miss. Nor does Leo(nardo DiCaptrio), it’s unsubtly impressive how he reinvents himself as a middle-aged stponer slacker, not without some muscle memory and dormant skills of mayhem and wit. This is perhaps the best political allegory of now. Right place right time for PTA to make it.