Film Information
Title: One Battle After Another
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Writer: Paul Thomas Anderson
Main Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Chase Infiniti
Year: 2025
Genre: Action Drama, Political Thriller
One Battle After Another arrives as one of Paul Thomas Anderson’s most ambitious films to date, a large-scale political thriller intertwined with the intimate story of a father and daughter. It is bold, confident, technically impressive, and filled with excellent performances. The story is engaging, the screenplay moves with clarity, the directing is sharp, and the film carries that unmistakable Anderson energy: elegant chaos, controlled tension, and a world that feels lived-in. But despite the strength of its craft, one major weakness runs through the film: its characters remain mostly “types” rather than psychologically layered individuals. They act, they move, they collide, but we rarely understand the deeper emotional roots that drive their choices. It is a strong film, even a memorable one, but not the deeply human portrait it could have been.
The story centers on Bob Ferguson, a once-radical activist who has withdrawn from public life and now lives quietly with his teenage daughter, Willa. When an adversary from his past resurfaces, Bob is forced back into the world he abandoned. The narrative sets up a dynamic tension between the life he wants to preserve and the violence and ideology he once embraced. This is fertile ground for drama, and the story itself is well-constructed. The film moves with a steady rhythm, balancing action sequences, flashbacks, emotional confrontations, and moments of political commentary. The result is a film that feels alive, energetic, and meaningful.
The acting elevates everything. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Bob with a mixture of exhaustion, intensity, and buried anger. It is a performance that feels lived-in, shaped by years of disillusionment. Sean Penn, as the authoritarian figure pursuing Bob, delivers a harsh and unsettling presence. He feels like a man welded to the machinery of power, someone who long ago lost sight of the human cost of his actions. And Chase Infiniti, as Willa, provides emotional grounding. Her presence gives the story stakes beyond ideology or conflict; she is the soul of the narrative, even when the script does not fully explore her interiority.
But despite strong performances, the characters remain underdeveloped. They are framed clearly, and their roles are defined, but the film does not dig deep into their psychological origins. Bob is shaped as the archetype of a revolutionary haunted by his past. Willa becomes the voice of a generation that inherits trauma rather than creates it. The antagonist embodies the rigid face of institutional power. These ideas are compelling, but Anderson does not examine the emotional histories that gave birth to them. We see what they do, but not why they became who they are. The film runs fast, and its pacing sometimes leaves character growth behind.
Bob Ferguson is an excellent example of this gap. Psychologically, he is a man torn between identities: the fiery young activist he once was and the cautious father he has become. His retreat into anonymity suggests guilt, exhaustion, or fear, but the film offers only fragments of these motivations. His emotional journey is more implied than expressed. Viewers can sense his internal conflict, but they cannot fully map it. The result is that Bob feels real and yet incomplete. He is a man defined by dramatic moments instead of an inner life.
Willa, meanwhile, symbolizes the tension between inherited history and personal freedom. She is intelligent, observant, and emotionally perceptive, yet the script does not follow her inner turmoil with enough patience. She wants to know her father, not just live under his protection. She wants to understand the past, not inherit its consequences blindly. Moments of this complexity appear in her reactions and questions, but they never develop into a full psychological arc. She remains a symbol of generational shift more than a fully realized individual.
The antagonist, the military figure pursuing Bob, suffers the most from this lack of depth. He is menacing and authoritative but feels like a direct embodiment of “the system” rather than a complex human being shaped by belief, fear, or history. His motivations are functional rather than emotional. This works on the level of plot, but it limits the emotional richness of the conflict. In Anderson’s best films, antagonists are not engines of plot; they are fractured, haunted, painfully human figures who complicate every moment. Here, the antagonist moves the story forward, but he does not deepen it.
From a psychological perspective, the film hints at fascinating themes. The inheritance of ideological trauma. The cost of activism on those who come after. The way political conviction can both empower and shatter an individual. The tension between the desire for safety and the instinct to fight for change. These themes exist in the film, but the characters are not explored deeply enough for these ideas to resonate with their full emotional weight. The film works more as a political thriller than a psychological drama.
This is particularly notable because Paul Thomas Anderson has always been a master of character depth. His earlier films whether the emotional storms of Magnolia, the fractured ambition of There Will Be Blood, or the complex mentorships of The Master are primarily character studies. He has a gift for revealing the hidden emotional logic behind strange or broken souls. But in One Battle After Another, he seems more interested in momentum, spectacle, and the shape of political conflict. It is not that he avoids emotion; rather, he moves past it too quickly. The machine of the narrative is always running, and there is little time to settle into the quieter crises of identity.
Stylistically, however, the film is superb. The cinematography is dynamic yet precise. The action sequences are choreographed with clarity and a sense of grounded realism. The color palette, often muted with flashes of intensity, mirrors the inner world of the characters even when the screenplay does not articulate it. The pacing is tight, but the film breathes when it needs to. Anderson blends large-scale political imagery with intimate, claustrophobic moments. This contrast gives the film an emotional push and pull that keeps it visually and rhythmically engaging.
Thematically, the film is about cycles; cycles of violence, cycles of ideology, cycles of personal failure and renewal. Bob tries to escape his past, but the past insists on repeating itself. Willa tries to break the cycle, but she is still caught in its edges. The antagonist insists on enforcing it. This thematic structure gives the film cohesion even when character depth falters. It creates the feeling that the story is part of a larger, ongoing history—not just of these characters, but of society itself.
In the end, One Battle After Another is a strong, gripping film. It has weight, ambition, and craftsmanship. The story is engaging, the screenplay solid, the performances excellent, and the directing highly controlled. But it is not a deeply psychological film. The characters behave like figures placed within a thematic and political machine rather than human beings whose interior lives we fully understand. It is good, sometimes very good, but it does not reach the emotional immersion that Anderson’s films often achieve.
Still, it is absolutely worth watching; especially for those who enjoy character-driven action dramas with political undertones. The film’s strengths far outweigh its weaknesses, and even in its imperfections, it remains a compelling entry in Anderson’s career. It offers spectacle without mindlessness, intelligence without pretension, and movement without chaos. It simply could have been greater if it had paused a little longer to let us into the hearts and minds of the people at its center.
