Here’s our last film review of 2025 and it’s for one of the biggest critical darlings of the year. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is a chaotic, fast-paced black comedy and action thriller.

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn (on excellent skin crawling form), and Chase Infiniti, it’s a chaotic look at past far-left revolutionary antics catching up with a man and his family. All very timely as a topic, somewhat divisive in its delivery, but for us arguably an instant classic.

Parking the Paranoia in One Battle After Another

The story is set in two parts, the first following explosive device expert Pat Calhoun (DiCaprio) and his antics with the far-left revolutionary group French 75.

He’s in a relationship with the rambunctious Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), who during her activities captures the attention of hard Conservative leaning Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn). Despite his ideological differences and conflict over that, the Colonel becomes obsessed with Perfidia.

Eventually, French 75 is busted and many of the members are shot or detained. Pat Calhoun takes up a false identity in witness protection and goes into hiding with his young daughter Willa.

Part two of the film is where the action really kicks in, moving the story forward 16 years. Pat is a washed up stoner raising his daughter badly, with Perfidia absent having fled to Mexico.

And there always looms the threat of Colonel Lockjaw. And Sean Penn makes this movie, he’s phenomenal as the deeply disturbed and repressed Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw.

We don’t know how he does it, but he makes the guy so utterly skin crawling with little moments such as licking his hairbrush to do his hair. He embodies odious, misguided Conservative “traditional values” hidden behind his absolute mania for the perverse.

Penn takes this a step further with Lockjaw’s walk, which is borderline Vaudeville comedic in its delivery. We couldn’t help feel Penn saw what RFK Jr. does for a living (i.e. being extremely weird) and adapted it for the Colonel.

The actor buffed up excessively for this role, too, as RFK Jr. has done in real life. He often wears a very tight shirt to show off his excessive muscles, believing this to be manly. Behold the man in action!

Colonel Lockjaw is one of the best character creations in this century of film, utterly ridiculous and inspired. You’d think no one like this could possibly exist. But then you remember RFK Jr. and there we go.

Anyway, the rest of the cast is also terrific.

DiCaprio has some of the best comedic moments, such as trying to remember French 75’s password process to speak to one of his former colleagues. As he freely admits, his years of drinking and smoking have shredded his ability to remember that bit.

Once the police are on his case, DiCaprio spends the rest of the film fleeing law enforcement in his dressing gown. And the final sections of the film are intense and manic, but always layered with a finely tuned sense of black humour.

We’re leaving off a lot of spoilers here, but we do want to flag the amazing car chase at the end of the film. Paul Thomas Anderson’s choice of location with undulating roads is inspired, creating some of the finest shot cinema we’ve ever seen.

You may notice the score there, too, which was completed by long-term collaborator Johnny Greenwood (guitarist and keyboardist for Radiohead).

Previously, he provided music on the likes of Anderson’s fantastic Punch-Drunk Love (2002). For One Battle After Another it follows the same unorthodox approach, but we do feel at times it doesn’t work well and is more of an annoyance for some scenes. We get it’s supposed to be unsettling and anxiety inducing, used to great effect to cover an autistic character in Punch-Drunk Love, but here we didn’t find it well judged.

That’s one minor issue aside. It’s a long film, but one that races by with so many intriguing ideas, developments, and creative flourishes.

The best film of 2025? Very possibly, yes, and a demonstration again that Paul Thomas Anderson is arguably the greatest director in Hollywood. Plus… that Sean Penn role. Cripes. You won’t forget that SOB in a long old while.

The Production of One Battle After Another

The film was shot in California and began in January 2024, taking a two month break to accommodation for actor Benicio del Toro’s Wes Anderson film The Phoenician Scheme, and everything wrapped in June 2024.

As for the concept, Anderson adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland (1990). It’s adapted to include a sense of feminine-driven revolutionary action, particular with Perfidia and her daughter Willa.

One Battle After Another may be one of the best films of 2025 but it has, unfortunately, not done well at the box office. Its budget was between $130-175 million and it made $205.2 million at global cinemas. Now that’s a big disappointment, but it will recoup more money on streaming service rentals and Blu-ray sales in the years ahead.

Quite why it flopped is debatable, but that massive budget didn’t help. Keep in mind Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023) was $100 million for the lot. And vampire jaunt Sinners from 2025 was $90 million.

And sometimes a film just doesn’t do well. Back in 1994, Shawshank Redemption flopped at cinemas. In the following years it amassed a huge following, though, as word of mouth and VHS rentals from Blockbuster launched its legacy.

But it is bad news at a time when Hollywood has relied very heavily on derivative formulas the last 15 years (i.e. endless superhero films). We hope its commercial failure doesn’t create a roadblock to projects like this, as it’s a reminder of how great Hollywood can be.

It’s certain to win a bunch of Oscars, too, which should draw more attention to it.

And don’t back out of watching it. Launch yourself in and enjoy the experience, it’s a hell of a ride and will make you think a little about the modern world we inhabit.