One Battle After Another
A Review by Ava Bellows
One Battle After Another. Teyana Taylor.
One Battle After Another
A review
by Ava Bellows
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another doesn’t signal its relevance. It just is. The chaos, the fear, the heat, the violence, it all feels sickeningly current. Not in a “timely” way, but in a way that grabs your throat and doesn't let go.
It starts with revolution. A radical group bombs, burns, breaks out detainees. Then it jumps seventeen years. What’s left isn’t glory or change. It’s a fugitive named Bob and a teenage daughter who doesn’t know the full story. Her mother’s gone. The state's still hunting them. That’s the setup.
Leonardo DiCaprio as Bob in One Battle After Another Photo by Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures - © Warner Bros. Pictures
The surprise is how funny this movie is. Not cute-funny, but unhinged, panicked, spiraling funny. Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance as Bob is one of his best, and one of his weirdest. There’s a scene of him on the phone trying to remember a password and it’s so precise and pathetic it almost tips into slapstick. Bob is broken, delusional, sometimes infuriating. But he keeps showing up for Willa, and that’s what sticks.
Chase Infiniti as Willa in One Battle After Another Photo by Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures - © Warner Bros. Pictures
Willa is the center. Chase Infiniti plays her without a trace of sentiment. She’s smart, scared, angry, resourceful. She doesn’t get to choose the fight, she just inherits it. The second half of the film is hers, and she carries it. Getting dragged through raids, convents, interrogations, mercenaries, she keeps going. She doesn’t get a clean arc. She gets something harder. Survival.
Teyana Taylor as Perfidia Beverly Hills - One Battle After Another Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures - © Warner Bros. Pictures
Teyana Taylor as Perfidia Beverly Hills is unforgettable. From the moment she shows up, it’s clear she’s a star. Her scenes, especially the ones with Sean Penn’s Lockjaw, are some of the most uncomfortable and hypnotic in the film. She’s not romanticized. She’s powerful, cruel, charismatic, and sometimes cold. You believe she meant it when she walked away. You believe she loved them anyway.
Sean Penn as Lockjaw in One Battle After Another Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures - © Warner Bros. Pictures
Lockjaw is Penn in full monster mode. But he never plays it flat. He’s pathetic, sad, sometimes even funny. His walk alone is impossible to forget. The man moves like his bones are mad at him. Penn plays him like he’s dying of something incurable, and maybe he is.
Benicio del Toro as Sensei Sergio St Carlos in One Battle After Another Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures - © Warner Bros. Pictures
But the surprise MVP (most valuable player) is Benicio del Toro as Sensei Sergio St. Carlos, a revolutionary sensei who turns out to be the one steady adult in the movie. He’s calm, unshakable, mythic without being ridiculous. In a film full of chaos, he makes silence feel like a weapon. Every moment with him lands like relief.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Paul Thomas Anderson in One Battle After Another Photo by Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures - © Warner Bros. Pictures
The camera never really stops moving. You feel like you’re running with the characters, trying to figure out what’s coming next. The only still moments come when someone stops to breathe. Those pauses hit hard. You’re meant to remember how disorienting it is when everything matters and nothing makes sense.
And still, Anderson never loses control. He walks the razor edge between satire and sincerity, violence and vulnerability. He’ll let you laugh right before something awful happens. He’ll let something awful happen, then let you feel something beautiful, and somehow, it’s perfect. Not hopeful, not tragic, just true. Like the film is saying, this is the country now. This is what’s left.
One Battle After Another doesn’t resolve. It doesn’t comfort. It burns. It believes in survival. It believes in paying attention. It believes some things are still worth fighting for, even when everything else says not to bother.
WATCH TRAILER
ONE BATTLE AT A TIME
DIRECTED BY Paul Thomas Anderson
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