One Battle After Another - Stars, Scale and the missing spark

One Battle After Another

English - Thriller / Action

161 min

VoD ( soon on JioHotstar)

One Battle After Another (OBAA) brings together an imposing cast—Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, and Benicio Del Toro—for a black comedy–thriller that is as conceptually ambitious as it is tonally unruly.

Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) is a member of a revolutionary group known as the French 75. Her concubine, Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio), is the group’s explosives expert—a well-meaning but bumbling figure who seems permanently out of his depth. 

During one operation, the group breaks immigrants out of a detention centre. Before leaving, Perfidia deliberately humiliates the commanding officer, Steve Lockjaw (Sean Penn). Lockjaw, who develops a warped fixation on her, eventually captures Perfidia. She agrees to his demands in exchange for her release.

Perfidia and Pat have a daughter. Pat clings to the hope that Perfidia will eventually abandon her radical ways. That is of course misplaced as  Perfidia is caught once again by Lockjaw, who this time offers her witness protection in exchange for information on her comrades, only to systematically execute them afterward. Pat manages to escape with their child, disappearing into another city.

Sixteen years later, the child has grown into a free-spirited young woman named Willa (Chase Infiniti). Pat, now living under the name “Bob,” is now a perpetually stoned  man shaped by years of fear and paranoia.  Lockjaw, meanwhile, has climbed the ranks and drawn the attention of a white supremacist secret society. Offered an opportunity to join them, he races to “clean up” his past—by hunting down Pat and Willa. That pursuit forms the spine of the film.

Based on Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, OBAA is co-written by director Paul Thomas Anderson. The film’s primary strength lies in its performances, particularly Sean Penn’s. As Lockjaw, Penn delivers a fascinating study in contradiction: corrupt yet disciplined, physically imposing while in command, but oddly servile and awkward in front of his superiors and in his moments of weakness. Grouchy, grumpy, and grotesquely sincere, Penn is consistently riveting.

DiCaprio’s Pat feels like a cousin to his character in Killers of the Flower Moon, minus the calculated malice. This is a gentler, more hapless figure and DiCaprio plays him with weary sincerity. Benicio Del Toro, unfortunately, is given far too little to do, though his brief scene involving a drunk-driving stop is effortlessly cool and memorable. Teyana Taylor brings a fierce, combustible energy to Perfidia, while Chase Infiniti, strikes an impressive balance between vulnerability and defiance.

Shot in VistaVision, reviving a widescreen film format, OBAA looks spectacular. This will easily sit with Sinners as one of the best looking and well shot English films of 2025. 

The imagery is expansive, lending the film a sense of scale that would have been especially effective in a theatrical setting. Jonny Greenwood’s eccentric, modernist score complements the film’s restless energy beautifully. Sparse piano notes frequently swell into grand, anxious compositions, most notably during the climactic chase in the final thirty minutes, which is both thrilling and superbly staged.

OBAA is an intriguing, often exhilarating watch, buoyed by strong performances and formidable technical craft. Yet it never fully commits to any one register. Caught between action, satire, and drama, the film feels like a collection of compelling ideas that never quite fuse into a definitive whole. With a cast this formidable, it is definitely a missed opportunity.