Spoilers below.

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Tyler: Norman, it’s been since There Will Be Blood that I sat down and watched a film from Paul Thomas Anderson. To this day, I’ve never seen the entirety of Boogie Nights. Call that shameful if you must, and likely should. I just don’t know the man’s work that well.

I’m not averse to it, though, and so when the online raves for Anderson’s latest began pouring in, I felt a need to see it post haste, knowing almost nothing about the picture apart from the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio and Benicio del Toro. One Battle After Another, the movie is called, and it’s what we’re here today to discuss.

Norman: Honestly, you should be ashamed. But because we all have our faults and blind spots, I’m willing to forgive you.

The good news is that I don’t think you really need a PTA primer to get this movie. It’s an action movie, after all. Big explosions, gunfire, stand-offs, and, as all action movies have, at least one scene of a person getting a boner while being held at gunpoint.

Tyler: It’s a very kinetic film. Starts bold and doesn’t back off from there.

You saw it twice! On consecutive nights!

Norman: Yeah. I have a hectic schedule. I knew I wanted to see it again and the only opportunity was to do it the very next night.

Kinetic is the right word. It keeps propelling us forward with action, cinematic tricks, humor, and brilliant performances.

Though they are completely different movies, I had recently caught a screening of Goodfellas and couldn’t help but think that the two movies shared that sense of bravura.

Tyler: Truly! I had thoughts of Scorsese early in OBAA, as the action flowed from one scene to the next without much by way of traditional transition. This thing got a move on.

Norman: Don’t let the audience breathe!

Tyler: Immediacy is the name of the game.

Norman: One advantage of seeing it a second time is that the movie slowed down for me a lot. I was able to track details better and relax a bit.

Tyler: A second viewing feels almost compulsory for appreciating One Battle After Another. I’m still on one screening.

Norman: Let’s dive in.

In a lot of ways, One Battle After Another is two movies. In the first part, we have the relentless depiction of a militant left-wing group known as the French 75. They are something like The Weather Underground, but fitted for the modern world. Then the movie jumps 16 years and becomes a family saga wrapped up in a gigantic chase sequence.

What stood out to you in this crazy concoction?

Tyler: Well, atop everything I saw and heard, one element topped all others. One character.

We can and will chop up what makes this film what it is, but its peaks are, without doubt, the scenes featuring del Toro. He is masterful.

Don’t get me wrong. This is a movie brimming with rich performances. But Sergio St. Carlos is one of the characters of the year.

Norman: Not the character I was expecting! But, yes! What’s interesting to me about how his character is situated is that, like many of the other protagonists, he’s doing left-wing activist work. But without the violence and without the pretension. He’s a character that you can’t help but adore.

Tyler: “Had a few small beers.”

That particular line delivery has already made it into online circles. It stood out to me in the theater, so I’m glad.

Norman: It’s a good one. If I could emulate one character in this movie, it would be him. Serious and loyal, but loose and seemingly true to himself. It’s wild that Benicio has had two great performances this year, both under Anderson directors!

Tyler: One Battle might very well land him a second Oscar.

Not that he’s not terrific in Wes A.’s The Phoenician Scheme, but for my money Best Actor is Sinners lead Michael B. Jordan’s to lose.

Norman: Let’s keep talking about performances.

I hope that Chase Infiniti becomes a legit star. Her performance was stunning.

Tyler: She’s tremendous. The movie doesn’t work without acting that effective.

Norman: That’s the thing. If they cast that part wrong, the movie would collapse. And I don’t think it would have worked with an established star. She needed to be someone that we could believe completely with no other associations.

Tyler: She’s a teenage adult, forced to make her way without much help from her father, played by DiCaprio in one of those roles that puts that oft-adolescent energy of his to good use.

I never bought Leo as Howard Hughes, say, but here in One Battle After Another he’s pitch-perfect as both a ballsy young revolutionary and a burned-out barely-together non-father-figure whose paranoia is baseless until it isn’t. He and Infiniti don’t share a ton of scenes within the narrative, but we see enough of their rapport to get the love between them, however unlikely is the daughter’s tolerance of her stoned-out dad.

Norman: That bond is the key to the movie.

In some of his movies (Boogie Nights, The Master), Anderson has shown a keen interest in what makes a community. What kind of bonds do we need to have in order to live and love together? That concern comes full into full view here.

Willa Ferguson (Chase Infiniti) is abandoned by her mother and rejected by her father. But strict biological bonds aren’t necessary in Anderson’s world. And, for that matter, in the real world.

Tyler: In what sense do you see DiCaprio’s character as rejecting Willa?

Norman: Her biological father is Lockjaw. He rejects her. Bob does the hard work of fathering, even if he does it poorly.

Tyler: Ah yes. Lockjaw. It took me a couple of minutes to assess that, yep, that really is Sean Penn.

What a monster. A topical one, to boot. This being 2025 and all.

Norman: I’m undecided on Penn’s performance, though. It is deliberately comic and ridiculous, which is in line with some of Thomas Pynchon’s characters (Pynchon’s book Vineland serves as an inspiration for One Battle). Penn cited Dr. Strangelove as an inspiration, too. But somehow Lockjaw’s exaggerated characterization doesn’t quite work for me.

Tyler: See, I found his character almost insidiously sympathetic in a handful of fleeting moments, those quickly undercut by his true, abhorrent viciousness. I don’t need any moments of gravitas from Lockjaw, who eventually recruits a hitman to murder his daughter. Am I crazy here?

A question for Anderson and Penn, too, is whether we need the erection.

So gross.

Norman: That moment really threw me off. I get that they have a history and there’s sexual tension, but it just didn’t fit for me. Maybe I’m not sexually deviant enough, but I can’t imagine getting an erection when someone is pointing a gun at me.

Tyler: Hey, to each their own, but that wouldn’t rev my engine either.

I dunno. There’s been a whole lot of rapturous response to One Battle After Another. I do think it’s a film that is at times exhilarating. As we’ve discussed, the performances are on-point and the action is propulsive. It’s got relevant things to say, too. This is a story about fighting fascism. It’s fair to wonder whether something this political will be permissible from Hollywood in the years to come. One Battle is progressive, it’s aggressive, it’s complex, it’s the kind of work we need from our great artists as reality’s skies darken. It’s a great movie.

But it hasn’t stuck with me over the couple of weeks since I saw it. It didn’t shake me to the core. I walked out, thinking “That was an exceptional film,” presuming that it would continue to wash over me in the days to come. It didn’t.

I said above, and you can attest, that a second viewing would go a long way in feeling out One Battle. For now, I think I admire it as much as I like it.

Norman: For me, One Battle works best if we think about it as an action movie helmed by a director who has a few original thoughts now and then. This is a smart, political movie. It’s funny and affecting. At the very least it has one of the coolest car chase sequences I’ve ever seen. I have misgivings about Colonel Lockjaw’s character, but that complaint is minor. This is a tight movie that had me completely invested from the first moment on. I think it’ll hold up in the long run.

Tyler: I think it aspires to be a lot more than just an action movie, though. Does it fail in that regard? Or am I putting too much stock in Anderson’s desire to helm a caper? This is a world of detainment camps, where the hero takes part in bombing establishment institutions. I can’t help but presume One Battle After Another aspires to a lot more than entertainment and thrills.

Maybe I’m wrong. And this wouldn’t make the film a bad one. I hesitate, nonetheless, to anoint it an instant classic.

Norman: I’d like to say a few words about why I think the movie might have a long shelf life.

I tend to think that the politics of OBAA have been misunderstood at least a little. Conservatives hate it, because they think it celebrates anarcho-terrorism and some liberals like it because they see a idealized, more systematic version of liberal activism, especially in the movie’s second part.

While there’s no doubt that Anderson’s sympathies are with the film’s liberals, OBAA doesn’t really handle many specific political problems. It does touch on two things. First, the failure of left-wing violence to actually solve problems. It’s here that Perfidia Beverly Hills abandons her daughter. Bob (Leo) pleads with her to take a new course directed by her new status as a mother. But she pushes forward with the French 75 and becomes swallowed up by her activism. The second is the blatant racism of the Christmas Adventurers. It’s here that Lockjaw cannot accept the existence of a biracial daughter. He states it in the most obvious way – it’s a higher honor to be a Christmas Adventurer than it is to be her father.

Willa is the product of political ideologies that destroy what is around them.

Bob leaves the action of politics for burnout, but he still holds on to the idealism. I gave a crooked laugh when he’s on the couch, settling in to get high and watch The Battle of Algiers. Sensei St. Carlos is the better way – an activist who is constructing and protecting things. He is keeping families together, creating and sustaining bonds.

Anderson’s politics are liberal, sure, but first and foremost they are lifegiving.

I think these themes should keep OBAA from dating poorly. I think it’ll stand as an exquisitely directed action picture with a heart of gold.

Tyler: It is warmhearted when all is said and done. The final scene sticks the landing.

Norman: I agree. The end product, the film implies, is a strong-willed girl who can take care of herself and will dedicate herself to the causes that Perfidia and Bob have dedicated themselves to. Hopefully this time with better results!

But it is, as the title says, one battle after another. It won’t end.

Tyler: By film’s end, I reckon Willa is no girl. Her triumphant hustle to join a righteous fray as her adoring dad lingers, stoned and supportive, on the couch—those are the strides of a field general in the making. She’s outgrown her age. She’s fearless.

Norman: Anderson is an optimist, I guess!

Tyler: We need those, too.

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