The 2025 awards season is shaping up to be a bounceback year for big studio films. After an Oscar cycle dominated by independent titles like “Anora” and “The Brutalist,” this year’s strongest early contenders have come from major studios. First came “Sinners,” and now Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” a Warner Bros. release positioned to be one of the studio’s strongest awards hopefuls.
Few filmmakers inspire the kind of anticipation that Anderson does. Over three decades he has created a body of work that feels at once restless and precise, from the ensemble sprawl of “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia” to the operatic intensity of “There Will Be Blood” and “The Master,” to the more delicate intimacy of “Phantom Thread” and the shaggy warmth of “Licorice Pizza.” “One Battle After Another” is Anderson’s most expansive project yet, filmed in VistaVision, 70mm, and IMAX, and powered by a cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor, Benicio del Toro, and newcomer Chase Infiniti.
The film, set to be released by Warner Bros. on September 26, 2025, is a loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland.” It marks Anderson’s second venture into Pynchon territory (after “Inherent Vice”), though “One Battle After Another” takes wide liberties, reimagining the spirit of the novel through a modern lens.
The first act throws us directly into the French 75, a radical collective staging raids and demonstrations meant to disrupt the system by any means necessary. Anderson opens with their assault on an immigration detention center, a sequence of handheld chaos and carefully composed frames that sets the tone for the movement’s mixture of conviction and volatility. It is here that Perfidia, played with fiery conviction by Teyana Taylor, first confronts Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), planting a dangerous connection that reverberates throughout the film. The intensity of the French 75’s exploits pulls Pat (DiCaprio), the group’s explosives man, closer to Perfidia, and their romance grows out of the adrenaline and the power high of their cause. From the beginning it feels unsustainable, with Pat’s longing for stability clashing against Perfidia’s recklessness and single-minded devotion. When Perfidia is eventually caught after a violent act, her decision to betray the group in exchange for her freedom fractures the collective and sends Pat and their infant daughter into hiding, a rupture that pivots the film into its second act.
Sixteen years later, the revolution carries on, but Pat, now going by the name Bob Ferguson, and his teenage daughter Willa have been exiled into a kind of French 75–imposed witness protection. They live under assumed anonymity in the fictional city of Baktan Cross, their lives reduced to secrecy and survival. DiCaprio plays Bob as a man stripped of his former bravado, now consumed by paranoia and dulled by drugs. There are comedic beats in his haziness, but beneath them is a palpable sadness, a man fumbling toward redemption as a father. Chase Infiniti is remarkable in her debut as Willa, meeting DiCaprio’s energy with steel and vulnerability, never shrinking beside him. Their dynamic is thorny, tense, and occasionally tender, and Anderson allows space for their halting attempts at connection. This middle section shifts the film from political spectacle to intimate family drama, a move that deepens rather than slows the story.
The third act pulls the storylines back together. Perfidia’s betrayal years earlier resurfaces as the reason Lockjaw is able to track down Bob and Willa, and Penn’s performance takes center stage. His Lockjaw is grotesque and absurd, yet Penn makes him dangerous, a figure who can switch from laughable to terrifying without warning.
We also meet Benicio del Toro’s Sergio who is first introduced as Willa’s martial arts instructor, a seemingly minor figure. But when Lockjaw’s forces raid Bachtan Moss, his true role is revealed. Sergio has been hiding undocumented immigrants in plain sight, shielding them while risking his own safety. Anderson stages this revelation in a bravura sequence of extended takes, folding Bob’s desperate escape into Sergio’s quiet acts of protection. Del Toro plays it with restraint, but the impact is powerful, grounding the film in humanity amidst the chaos.
Within the third act is a car chase that will be one of the most talked about scenes in the film. Filmed in IMAX, the sequence avoids the usual trappings of city chases or sleek cars. Instead, Anderson uses landscape itself as the battleground. Cars weave through rolling hills, each blind curve carrying fresh peril, while Greenwood’s pounding score ratchets the anxiety higher and higher. It’s a set piece that redefines what a car chase can be, less about speed than about terrain, geography, and inevitability. The sequence is breathtaking, both for its technical daring and for how it crystallizes the story’s themes of pursuit, survival, and reckoning.
For a film that runs two hours and forty-two minutes, “One Battle After Another” moves with surprising momentum. Greenwood’s score keeps the pulse alive, Bauman’s cinematography maintains a restless energy even in quieter stretches, and Andy Jurgensen’s editing gives the film an organic rhythm that carries the story forward without ever feeling overlong.
The ensemble performances are consistently strong. DiCaprio brings humor, paranoia, and fragility to Bob, giving one of his most varied portrayals in years. Taylor sets the film ablaze in the first act, her presence lingering long after she’s gone. Del Toro gives the story moral grounding, understated but essential. Chase Infiniti is the revelation, establishing herself as a major new talent. And Penn, unafraid to court absurdity, turns Lockjaw into one of the year’s most unforgettable characters.
The technical achievements are equally assured. Bauman’s cinematography finds both chaos and beauty, Florencia Martin’s production design grounds every location in texture, Colleen Atwood’s costumes trace the passage of time with subtle detail, and Greenwood’s score becomes a character of its own, relentless in its ability to shape mood and momentum.
Without giving away specifics, the most striking element of the film may be its unexpectedly hopeful tone. Anderson resists the temptation to focus on despair like so many films that echo todays political environment and unrest. Instead, the bond between Bob and Willa becomes the compass of the film’s conclusion. Their relationship offers a fragile but resonant sense of hope, one that feels earned rather than imposed.
“One Battle After Another” is an ambitious and absorbing work from Paul Thomas Anderson, one that blends scale with intimacy and politics with personal stakes. It will be a central part of the awards conversation, with DiCaprio, Penn, Taylor, and Infiniti all in contention for recognition, and Greenwood’s score and Bauman’s cinematography certain to be remembered among the year’s best. I give the film a solid A. It is one of the defining releases of 2025 and a film that will be discussed heavily into this year’s awards season, and likely beyond.