PAUL Thomas Anderson has never been afraid of chaos, but One Battle After Another pushes his eccentric instincts into territory that borders on parody. Adapted loosely – very loosely – from Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, this war-sized art film is not about simple action spectacle.
Instead, it is an unapologetically odd meditation on revolution, America’s uneasy history with racial cleansing and the bizarre persistence of “superior” underground white clubs who believe their bloodlines entitle them to run the nation.
On paper, it reads like a dark thriller. On screen, it plays like a fever dream. Anderson stages the film as a sweeping action piece but fills it with moments so strange, so tonally jarring, that one half-expects the camera to pan over to a Monty Python sketch.
It is not the typical crowd-pleaser and that is precisely the point.
DiCaprio, in peak sweat-drenched mode
Leonardo DiCaprio, playing the washed-up revolutionary Bob Ferguson, delivers the kind of performance that makes viewers remember why he has two trophies on the mantelpiece and keeps being invited back to the Oscars. He sweats, he rants, he looks perpetually three seconds away from a heart attack, and it is magnificent.
Anderson clearly enjoys putting his lead through the wringer. DiCaprio spends most of the runtime in a state of existential exhaustion, yet his charisma anchors the film whenever it threatens to spiral into incoherence.
This is not the charming conman or slick businessman role – it is raw, desperate and oddly hilarious. The actor’s commitment is so intense that even when the story veers into abstract racial allegories and secret-club lunacy, the audience cannot look away.
Not your popcorn blockbuster
Calling One Battle After Another “challenging” feels like an understatement. This is not a film designed for general audiences. The explosions and brawls may suggest a straight-up action thriller, but Anderson refuses to let anyone get comfortable.
Instead, he layers in eccentric world-building that touches on revolutions gone wrong, systemic corruption and clandestine white supremacist “clubs” who dress like country-club elites while plotting ethnic purges in basements.
It is messy, yes. At times, it is even absurd. Yet beneath the oddball flourishes lies substance, grit about America’s inability to reckon with its own violent history and a sharp satire about cycles of oppression.
Those willing to engage with the strangeness will find moments of brilliance, but those expecting a tidy blockbuster will probably leave confused and muttering about refunds.
Surprising raunchiness
It would be remiss not to mention the film’s unexpectedly raunchy side. Anderson has sprinkled sensual and sexual sequences throughout his filmography, but here they arrive with a surprising boldness. A few scenes push boundaries in ways that might make viewers squirm, laugh nervously or question the Film Censorship Board’s coffee supply.
The eroticism is not gratuitous, though it punctuates the story’s themes of betrayal, dominance and desire. At times, the physicality between characters feels as violent as the firefights. While the film could certainly have trimmed a scene or two, the raunch is part of the whole strange tapestry. In an odd way, it completes the movie.
Supporting circus
While DiCaprio carries the film, the supporting cast ensures that it never becomes a one-man show. Sean Penn leans into snarling villainy with the kind of menace that teeters between terrifying and cartoonish. Benicio del Toro, meanwhile, seems to be playing in a different movie altogether – half martial arts trainer, half accidental comedian – but somehow his energy works.
Regina Hall adds much-needed sharpness and gravity, cutting through the madness with acidic wit.
Teyana Taylor, as the conflicted ex-ally and estranged partner, gives the film its emotional turbulence. And newcomer Chase Infiniti, as DiCaprio’s daughter, brings a surprising steadiness to the whirlwind around her.
Each performer commits, even when the screenplay throws them into scenes that feel written during a sleep-deprived Pynchon-Anderson dream swap.
Style, substance, stubbornness
Visually, One Battle After Another is stunning. Michael Bauman’s cinematography moves from suburban stillness to chaotic urban mayhem with ease. Florencia Martin’s production design is equally meticulous, capturing mundane Americana and dystopian exaggerations of it.
And Jonny Greenwood’s score, part pounding industrial, part elegiac strings, feels like an electric current running under the entire film.
Yet style here serves more than aesthetics. Anderson’s stubborn refusal to dilute his eccentric vision makes the film maddening and admirable. At nearly three hours, it dares viewers to surrender to its rhythm: moments of brutal clarity, followed by passages of pure nonsense, then sudden emotional gut-punches.
Film that divides
One Battle After Another is destined to divide. Some will hail it as a wild, unfiltered masterwork that confronts uncomfortable truths with absurd bravado. Others will dismiss it as self-indulgent nonsensemasquerading as profundity.
Both camps will be right.
What is certain is that the film would not leave audiences indifferent. Whether laughing at its eccentricities, bristling at its depictions of racial cleansing or marvelling at DiCaprio’s volcanic intensity, viewers will leave talking. And in today’s industry of forgettable blockbusters, that alone is a kind of victory.
Cannot be ignored
Anderson has crafted a movie that is too strange to be mainstream and too bold to be ignored. It is eccentric, raunchy, occasionally ridiculous and absolutely not for everyone. But beneath the chaos, there is substance, commentary on cycles of violence, the absurdity of superiority myths and the stubborn hope of new generations.
Those willing to watch One Battle After Another with an open mind, rather than expecting a neat action thriller, will discover a film of bizarre but undeniable power. It is not general-audience bait – it is cinematic provocation. And at the centre of it all, DiCaprio’s acting remains legendary.