🎬 One Battle After Another
Release Year: 2025 –
Streaming Platform: MAX
⭐ IMDb: 8.5/10 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 100%
One Battle After Another is the rare studio-backedmoviethat feels dangerous, hilarious and heartbreaking all at once, and watching it on MAX hardly blunts its impact. Paul Thomas Anderson turns a loose Thomas Pynchon adaptation into a black-comedy action thriller about revolution, family and the absurdity of American power, anchored by a bruised, lived‑in turn fromLeonardo DiCaprio.
The film has already drawn near‑rapturous critical acclaim, with praise for its bold political stance, muscular set‑pieces and knotty structure, even as some viewers find the pacing and tonal whiplash challenging. For anyone browsing MAX looking for another safe, disposableOTTwatch, One Battle After Another is absolutely not that – it’s messy, ambitious and very likely one of 2025’s conversation‑starting films.
Overview
What isOne Battle After Anotherabout?
One Battle After Another is a 2025 American black comedy action thriller written, directed and co‑produced byPaul Thomas Anderson, loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland. The story follows washed‑up ex‑revolutionary Pat “Ghetto” Calhoun, now hiding out under the name Bob Ferguson with his teenage daughter, as their quiet off‑grid life is shattered by the return of a fascistic colonel he once crossed.
Anderson blends far‑left revolutionary history, ICE roundups and shadowy US power structures with zany, often very dark humor, veering between satire, thriller and family drama. This might sound like typical PTA maximalism, but here the politics are unusually explicit, making the film feel of‑the‑moment in a way that’s bracing rather than preachy.
Tone and genre mix
The movie operates as an action thriller on a grand scale – complete with gun battles, rooftop escapes and a standout car chase on a desert highway – yet feels as paranoid and surreal as a 70s conspiracymovie. The tone constantly shifts, sometimes in a single scene, from stoner comedy to harrowing migrant‑detention horror to operatic family tragedy.
Whether that tonal chaos works for you will determine how much you connect with One Battle After Another. For many critics, the helter‑skelter quality is part of the point, reflecting the disorienting nightmare politics the characters are trapped in.
Story and pacing
Plot (spoiler‑light)
Pat “Ghetto” Calhoun and fellow revolutionary Perfidia belong to a militant group called the French 75, whose break‑outs and bombings put them on a collision course with Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, a cruelly comic embodiment of US military power. After a humiliating encounter, Lockjaw becomes obsessively fixated on Perfidia, sparking a long game of betrayal and informants that ultimately forces Pat to disappear with their daughter under new identities.
Sixteen years later, Pat – now “Bob” – lives in paranoid, half‑stoned exile with his daughter Willa, until a fresh ICE‑style raid and Lockjaw’s re‑emergence drag them back into the orbit of ex‑comrades, shady militias and a violent cross‑country chase. The movie tracks Bob’s fight to rescue Willa and reckon with his own failures as a father and a revolutionary, using the plot as a pretext for set‑pieces and political riffs rather than a tightly wound thriller clock.
Pacing: deliberate chaos
Pacing is where One Battle After Another will lose someOTTviewers. After a propulsive opening stretch, Anderson leans into digressions, side characters and shaggy conversations that thicken the texture but undercut forward momentum. The middle third in particular can feel structurally lumpy, with brilliant scenes stacked next to each other more on thematic rhyme than narrative necessity.
However, if you are used to Anderson’s later‑period work – think Inherent Vice’s woozy structure – the rhythm feels intentional rather than sloppy. The disjointed pacing mirrors Bob’s scrambled state of mind, and when the movie slams back into pure action, the contrast makes those sequences hit even harder.
Performances
Leonardo DiCaprio as Pat “Ghetto” Calhoun / Bob
DiCaprio delivers one of his loosest, funniest and most wounded performances in years as Pat/Bob, a former firebrand now stumbling through middle‑aged burnout and barely controlled panic. He plays Bob as a man constantly three seconds away from bolting or breaking down, yet still capable of terrifying competence when violence erupts, which gives themovieboth humor and stakes.
The father‑daughter dynamic with Chase Infiniti’s Willa becomes the emotional backbone of the story, allowing DiCaprio to drop the swagger and lean into guilt, tenderness and sheer exhausted love. Anderson clearly trusts him with long, dialogue‑heavy scenes, and DiCaprio rewards that trust with work that feels lived‑in rather than showy.
Chase Infiniti, Sean Penn and the ensemble
Chase Infiniti is a revelation as Willa, bringing teenage prickliness, vulnerability and coiled rage to a part that could easily have become a plot device. Her scenes questioning Bob’s past and her own origin drive some of the film’s most affecting beats, including a late‑movie encounter tied to the mystery of her father that the marketing has teased.
Sean Penn’s Colonel Lockjaw is pitched just shy of cartoonish, a monstrous yet darkly funny symbol of militarized cruelty whose every appearance jolts themovie’s energy. Benicio del Toro lends weary gravitas and oddball humor as Sensei Sergio, while Teyana Taylor’s Perfidia and Regina Hall’s Deandra sharpen the film’s feminist and racial undercurrents without turning speeches into lectures.
Direction and visuals
Paul Thomas Anderson’s approach
Anderson stages One Battle After Another as a deliberately overstuffed collage of American rage, counterculture nostalgia and slapstick chaos. The script swings between deadpan one‑liners, tense standoffs and Pynchon-esque tangents, trusting the audience to ride the waves instead of smoothing them out for easyOTTconsumption.
What impresses most is how he fuses political specificity – ICE raids, border‑detention horrors, references to surveillance and far‑right militias – with a surreal, sometimes dreamlike visual grammar. The result is a film that feels pointedly about America now while still existing in the stylized, heightened universe of a Paul Thomas Andersonmovie.
Cinematography, editing and music
Shot in large‑format VistaVision by Anderson and Michael Bauman, the film has a crisp, wide‑screen look that turns safe suburban cul‑de‑sacs and desert highways into stages for revolution and chase‑movie spectacle. The camera is constantly roaming, catching throwaway gestures and background details that deepen the world, while the big action set‑pieces are shot with clarity rather than shaky chaos.
Andy Jurgensen’s editing leans into the helter‑skelter structure, letting scenes breathe and then snapping into razor‑tense cross‑cutting during raids and chases. Jonny Greenwood’s score is a highlight, mixing jagged strings, surf‑rock touches and synth pulses to create a nervy soundscape that plugs directly into the characters’ fear and paranoia.
Pros and cons
What works
- Bold, unapologetically political storytelling that connects personal trauma to systemic violence without turning into a lecture.
- Exceptional performances fromLeonardo DiCaprio, Chase Infiniti, Sean Penn and the wider ensemble, each carving out a distinct, memorable space.
- Breathtaking set‑pieces – especially the desert‑highway car chase and detention‑center break‑outs – that remind you Anderson can direct action as confidently as drama.
- Rich visual and sonic craft, from the VistaVision cinematography to Jonny Greenwood’s nervy, propulsive score.
What might not work for everyone
- Shaggy, uneven pacing that can feel indulgent or disjointed if you prefer tight, plot‑driven thrillers.
- Tonal clashes between farce, gore, and heartfelt family drama that some viewers may find jarring rather than daring.
- Dense political and historical references that may play as alienating if you come in expecting a straightforward actionmovieto half‑watch on anOTTplatform.
Cast
Below is a focused look at the primarycastof One Battle After Another.
A fullcastlist runs much longer, but this core set of performers carries the emotional and political weight of themovie.
Crew
One Battle After Another is very much a filmmaker‑driven project, powered by long‑time PTA collaborators and top‑tier department heads.
The synergy between Anderson, Greenwood, Bauman and Jurgensen in particular gives theott movieits nervous, propulsive personality.
Who should watchOne Battle After Another?
This is a must‑watch for fans ofPaul Thomas Anderson, political cinema and character‑driven action films who don’t mind structural messiness. If you loved Inherent Vice, There Will Be Blood or even DiCaprio’s work in The Departed and want to see him in an angrier, scruffier register, thismovieis absolutely worth your time on MAX.
Viewers looking for a simple Friday‑nightOTTthriller to half‑watch while scrolling might struggle with the density, but anyone interested in contemporary American politics, border issues or radical history will find the film both provocative and bitterly funny. It also rewards repeat viewings, as jokes, background details and political connections pop more clearly once you know where the story is heading.
Watching it on MAX
On MAX, One Battle After Another streams in a high‑bitrate presentation that preserves the detail and color of the VistaVision imagery surprisingly well forOTTviewing. While the film was clearly designed for a theatrical experience – especially that desert‑highway chase – a good TV and sound setup at home still does justice to Greenwood’s score and the layered sound design.
MAX also makes it easier to rewatch specific sequences, which helps a lot with a narratively densemovielike this. If possible, avoid heavy pausing or phone‑scrolling during the first viewing; the tonal flow and mounting paranoia land best when you let thefilmwash over you in one go.
Verdict
One Battle After Another is not a tidy crowd‑pleaser, but it is a ferocious, formally inventive and darkly funnymoviethat sticks in your brain long after the credits. DiCaprio’s performance, Anderson’s direction and Greenwood’s score fuse into a work that feels both like a culmination of PTA’s obsessions and a sharp response to current American politics.
If you value ambitious, politically charged cinema and don’t mind a few narrative tangles along the way, this might be one of the essential MAX originals – or at least essential MAX titles – of 2025. For more casualOTTviewers, it may frustrate more than it thrills, but even then, it’s hard to deny the force of its best sequences and the commitment of itscast.
Reviews & rankings (with table)
Critical and audience reception
One Battle After Another has been widely acclaimed by critics, who highlight its prescient political edge and audacious genre‑mixing style. Audience reactions are more mixed but generally positive, with many praising the originality while noting the demanding pacing.
For anyone searching specifically for an honest One Battle After Another review before pressing play on MAX, the consensus is clear: this is a challenging but richly rewardingott moviethat trusts its audience and has something urgent to say.