Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another hits theaters with revolutionary scope

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another arrives in theaters Friday, a 2 hour 50 minute epic that uses a politically charged world as its canvas. The film, inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, plunges audiences into a revolution that is front and center from the opening frames. Star Teyana Taylor says the director isn’t aiming to soothe viewers, as the story homes in on immigration, racism and systemic corruption carried out in increasingly absurd ways. “I feel like PTA calls out a lot of things that are trying to get swept under the rug,” Taylor told The Associated Press, referring to the director by his nickname. “And that’s what I respect. This is really waking, shaking and baking some s---. Like, you gotta shake the table.”

The film introduces a Weather Underground–inspired group called the French 75, with Perfidia Beverly Hills at its center. In the opening sequence, the French 75 liberate undocumented detainees, blast corrupt political offices and mete out their own form of justice, one action at a time. The ensemble mixes musicians-turned-actors such as Dijon Duenas, Alana Haim and Shayna McHayle with veteran performers Regina Hall and Wood Harris. “I mean, this movie is based on some of the revolutionaries and anarchists of the late ’60s, the Weathermen that were fighting for civil rights, environmentalism too at the time, capitalism, Vietnam,” Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays Bob Ferguson—initially known as Ghetto Pat—told the AP. “But it’s about the implosion of that too, about the extremes that people go to for their own ideology.”

The plot then accelerates 16 years into the future. Perfidia has disappeared, and DiCaprio’s character lives under a new alias in a sanctuary city, a paranoid, stoner dad raising his teenage daughter, Willa, played by newcomer Chase Infiniti. The routine of daily life is interrupted when the once-durable antagonist Col. Steven Lockjaw, portrayed by Sean Penn, resurfaces and targets the duo, forcing them back onto the run. Infiniti drew on the demanding emotional beats of the role, saying, “There’s a lot of moments where I was like, I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to do this, but thankfully I had amazing scene partners and a great support system to kind of assure me that I was here to do my job and I knew exactly that I could do it.”

One Battle After Another is Anderson’s costliest project to date and was shot entirely in VistaVision, a decades-old format that has seen a revival in recent years with films like The Brutalist. Benicio del Toro, who plays Sensei Sergio St. Carlos, leads an undocumented migrant hideaway and argues that the measured blend of improv with DiCaprio’s performance, all in the antique format, required unwavering trust among cast and director as they pushed through the production with a limited number of takes. “I wouldn’t be pompous enough to say movies change people. But it might just open a door that leads to another door that leads to a hallway to another door,” del Toro said. DiCaprio described Bob Ferguson as a personal form of expression, saying it allows him to “shine a light on certain issues about humanity and different subject matters.” “I’m always searching for a movie that doesn’t necessarily have meaning but is thought-provoking, that holds a mirror up to who we are as a society, as people, of humanity,” he added. “And that’s what I think the heart of this movie is, is how to find humanity in a world that is incredibly divided. … It’s not a film where there’s a specific sort of ideology that Paul is putting into it. It’s saying this is who we are, this is the world we live in.”

For Taylor, the 20-year arc of the project’s script underscores its ongoing relevance. “It didn’t need a change; it didn’t need to be updated because it was all still so relevant,” she said. “It’s time to wake up, and it’s time to shed light on the necessary conversations.”

As the film arrives amid heightened conversations about immigration, race and political power, its creators emphasize that the work aims to reflect, not sermonize, on a history that continues to resurface in modern times. The result is an ambitious spectacle that sits at the intersection of social critique and big-screen entertainment, inviting audiences to consider how far society has come—and how far it still has to go.