Dir: Paul Thomas Anderson | US Thriller 162′ 2025
Paul Thomas Anderson and his co-writer Thomas Pynchon have created a fast-moving thriller, a take-down of America split by the counterculture of two dominant factions: the far-right military and the left-leaning revolutionaries bent on ambushing the migrant-holding prisons on the Mexican border. One Battle veers all over the road for two and a half hours, and the final car chase is one of the most spectacular and cleverly devised of recent times.
Based on Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, it’s a paranoid, pulpy, politically-driven piece of work with peerless performances from stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Benicio del Toro on the revolutionary side, and, on the right, Sean Penn as the musclebound monster Colonel Lockjaw. The female protagonists are as angry as hell and played by Teyana Taylor and her onscreen daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti), and the action sashays backwards and forward in a dizzying array of blistering set pieces that tell a story of father-daughter discord in a US-Mexico migrant setting where the ‘powers that be’ are determined to root out illegal aliens.
DiCaprio is Perfidia’s boyfriend Bob. But you get the impression his radical antics were really spurred on by his obsession for this black hellraiser whose narrative arc follows her from heavily pregnant gunslinger to her fate at the hands military madcap Colonel Lockjaw, Willa’s real father. This all came about after a spot of ‘reverse rape’ – or so he calls it, due to his penchant for black ‘girls’.
Bob is the most sympathetic character. A raddled revolutionary activist cum pot head who becomes increasingly more relatable as the film draws to its fantastical finale.
Lately he’s become a worrying, overprotective ‘daddy’ to Willa and would rather put his feet up on the settee in a dressing gown and watch a film on telly like Pontecorvo’s cult classic The Battle of Algiers than stress himself out by pursuing his previous revolutionary nonsense and remembering passwords.
Bob keeps in contact, albeit halfheartedly, with del Toro and calls on him in desperation when Willa is in danger from the Colonel who will do anything to secure his membership to an exclusive country club that doesn’t allow Blacks or Jews or their relations. So a certain undesirable must be eliminated – will it be Willa or Colonel Lockjaw? That’s for you to find out in this outlandishly violent often hilarious bit of fun that leaves you feeling even more depressed than ever about the serious state of the world. @MeredithTaylor
One Battle After Another is out on 26 September in the UK and 24 September in France Benelux.