PTA’s tour de force, operatic long-arc film not only sets a new tone for studio filmmaking but ‘bobbles’ with such incredible airtight momentum that it oscillates between absurdist comedy and high-stakes action-thriller with effortless ease, as a man is haunted by the consequences of his past political actions.

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I’ve not felt such a bona fide sense of wondrous thrill from a Hollywood studio film since Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010). I must emphasise ‘Hollywood studio film’ because One Battle After Another is made within the very same system that more often than not churns out one intolerable franchise after another.

When it doesn’t, and when faith is put in the hands of filmmakers working at a level very few can or will aspire to, we have a tour de force of a film that comes once in a blue moon to set a new tone for studio filmmaking.

I daresay Paul Thomas Anderson’s new work will become a stone-cold modern classic by the end of this decade. Even then, it’s only my third favourite PTA after There Will Be Blood (2007) and Magnolia (1999).

A mix of genres so playful that one must go back to Punch-Drunk Love (2002) to feel a similar slice of bobbling energy, One Battle After Another works best as a piece that oscillates between absurdist comedy and high-stakes action thriller, like a ship navigating large tonal waves. 

It is just as well then that PTA gives us, in the third act, one of this decade’s most experiential car chases that traverses the nauseatingly hilly roads of the Texas Dip in the Borrego Springs.

Those never-ending ups and downs, or, well, ‘bobblings’, mimic not just tone and counter-tone as alluded to but also the cyclical nature of its thematic storytelling (also hinted at from the film’s title).

Leonardo DiCaprio (who’s handy with dynamite sticks) plays a former member of the French 75, whose anarchic revolutionary tactics aim to disrupt and sow fear and chaos in American law and order, finds himself haunted by the presence of an old nemesis from the U.S. military (Sean Penn in an intimidating Oscar-worthy performance), who now targets his daughter (Chase Infiniti in a superb breakout role).

“I don’t get mad. I don’t get mad about anything anymore.”

As one of the most airtight films I’ve ever seen that operates at a breakneck speed, One Battle After Another‘s effortless pacing for nearly three hours exhibits not just a showboating of craft, but signals PTA’s intention to go much more mainstream than anyone would have imagined.

He doesn’t, however, compromise in terms of the kind of artistry that aficionados have lapped up since his debut feature Hard Eight (1996), including witty dialogue, and oddballish scenarios and characterisations that seem like a potent mix of the Coens and Tarantino.

Furthermore, PTA’s reliance on Jonny Greenwood as his go-to composer since There Will Be Blood reaches a second zenith here as the latter’s wall-to-wall score alternates between loud declarations of dramatic forebodings (literally from the get-go) and atonal-rhythmic percussion-led whimsy.

When Leo can be both Worst and Best Dad of the Year, I guess one can laugh and scream at the same time.

Thematically, One Battle After Another dives right into the heart of divisive American politics, including rising militarism, illegal immigration, race, etc., as well as the zeitgeist of today, as led by differing perspectives expressed by the Boomers, Gen Alphas, and everyone in between. It portends a calamitous America in unstable flux.

PTA’s work would make a great double-bill with Ari Aster’s masterful Eddington (2025), but it is One Battle After Another‘s father-daughter core that gives such an operatic, long-arc film an uncommon emotional heft. 

After a week, and as I write this review in the hospital for a compressed neck, I still feel the bliss of that wondrous thrill radiating from my recovering body.

Grade: A+

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