After days of avoiding spoilers on X, I finally watched "One Battle After Another" during its second screening on the 26th. By then, the early reactions were already impossible to ignore. Viewers were hailing it as "revolutionary", "radical", and "the best film of the decade".
Yet, after such a high expectation, when the lights came up, I was unsure how to feel. Even more so when I went back to Letterboxd and read reactions describing it as "revolutionary, radical and making modern fascists and white-nationalists look like the dumbest POS for 2 hours and 45 minutes." I could not help but wonder: did we all watch the same film? Or are the leftists so starved for representation that they are deeming the bare minimum as revolutionary?
Often people tend to say that you can't judge a PTA film on first watch, which I doubt if it is the compliment that they think it is. However, with time and reflection, I realised that despite its occasional excesses, Paul Thomas Anderson's latest work contains more greatness than failure, particularly in its audacious and emotionally charged second half.
Adapted from Thomas Pynchon's "Vineland", "One Battle After Another" is Anderson's attempt to translate a dense, satirical novel about the Reagan era into the visual and moral language of the Trump age. Pynchon's 1980s California: a landscape suffocated by surveillance, moral hypocrisy, and the commodification of rebellion, finds a contemporary echo in Anderson's portrayal of a nation consumed by populism and fear. The parallels between Reagan and Trump are stark and deliberate. Both preside over eras defined by the rise of right-wing nationalism, the glorification of "law and order," and the systemic demonisation of dissent. In Reagan's America, the War on Drugs became an ideological weapon; in Trump's, the war turned inward: against migrants, minorities, freedom of speech and truth itself. Anderson's America portrays the same forces of exclusion, paranoia, and manufactured spectacle persist, disguised in new rhetoric and amplified by modern media that have been existing since as far as the birth of America.
The film's first act is deliberately chaotic, drenched in colour, sound, and contradiction. It moves between absurd comedy and carnal spectacle. The tone feels almost parodic, as if mocking his own earnestness through exaggeration. The characters, particularly Perfidia, played by Teyana Taylor, are introduced with commanding presence but limited psychological depth. Her affair with Colonel Lockjaw seems to oscillate between manipulation and genuine passion, yet her motives remain elusive. Why does she sleep with him? Why does she wear his T-shirt afterward? Does she love him, or is she weaponising intimacy? When she ultimately betrays her comrades, the film refuses to moralise or explain her choices. She remains suspended between victim and betrayer, both agent and pawn. It is one of the film's most provocative threads, but also one of its least developed.
Then the film begins to shift. The second half is where "One Battle After Another" finds its true rhythm and heart. Anderson trades the excesses of the opening for something more disciplined and propulsive. The focus turns toward Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti), whose fragile bond becomes the emotional anchor in a world unraveling. Here, the film regains the humanism often lost in its first half. The action is still relentless, but it carries consequence and clarity. Each explosion, each chase, feels tethered to emotional stakes rather than spectacle alone. The father-daughter dynamic, tender and volatile, ties the chaos together and reminds us of the personal cost of revolution and repression alike.
The car chase sequence near the climax is easily one of the most exhilarating moments of Anderson's career. It unfolds as an adrenaline-fueled set piece and a metaphorical crescendo. The choreography of motion, the pulse of Jonny Greenwood's score, and the precision of editing creates an experience that is thrilling and transcendent.
Beyond the action, the second half also restores the moral and thematic coherence that the first seemed to resist. The film becomes a study of endurance: how individuals preserve tenderness and principle within systems designed to consume them. The political commentary grows more resonant as the story progresses. The images of militarised policing, surveillance drones, and detention camps evoke not only the legacy of Reagan's America but the normalisation of cruelty under Trump. Yet Anderson does not preach. He constructs his critique visually, through rhythm and through collisions.
Anderson's command of craft remains extraordinary. Each of his films inhabits its own world, distinct in texture and rhythm. Here, he brings his aesthetic precision into the present, creating something both political and poetic. The cinematography breathes in smoke and neon; the sound design fuses chaos with control. The editing, which initially feels erratic, evolves into a carefully sustained pulse. And Greenwood's score deserves particular praise for guiding the film's emotional shifts with an intelligence that borders on symphonic.
"One Battle After Another" is not a perfect film but it is alive. Its first act is indulgent, even abrasive, but its second half reveals the kind of mastery only a filmmaker of Anderson's vision can summon. The film's contradictions: its political anger, its sensual energy, its tonal oscillations, are ultimately its vitality. It refuses to offer comfort or certainty. It makes an important statement about the cycles of resistance and repression, about how fascism mutates but never disappears, and about how personal love becomes the last remaining form of defiance.
Much of this success is anchored by the performances. Leonardo DiCaprio delivers one of the finest portrayals of his career: weary, impulsive, raw, and hysterically funny. Bob is a man torn between defiance and despair. Opposite him, Chase Infiniti brings quiet force to Willa, capturing defiance, confusion and the complicated feelings towards her mother with precision. Teyana Taylor, as Perfidia, commands every frame she appears in; radiating power and enigma. Her physicality and emotional volatility make her one of Anderson's most magnetic characters.
The fact that so many conversations about it rush to call it radical or world-shaking may be partly a symptom of desperation. But true radicalism does not depend on consensus. It depends on the work's ability to keep you arguing with it. So, while calling it revolutionary may be an overstatement, keeping the current political climate in mind, it is certainly courageous. In an era of hollow outrage and cinematic safety, "One Battle After Another" feels dangerous, imperfect, and necessary.