One Battle After Another (2025) * * *

Directed by:  Paul Thomas Anderson

Starring:  Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Regina Hall, Chase Infiniti, Tony Goldwyn, Benicio del Toro, Teyana Taylor

One Battle After Another is a political action movie.  It showcases both extremes in the right and the left and makes them both insufferable.  You have a leftist revolutionary group which robs banks, shoots people, blows up detention centers, and commits other acts of violence in the name of righteousness and ending oppression.  The right are secret white supremacists and run a shadow government while members like Col. Steven Lockjaw (Penn) clearly has a thing for black women, even though he's trying to gain membership to a "whites-only" wing of the government.  Anderson is probably thinking like we do:  Can we meet somewhere in the middle?

The opening scenes gives us Bob (DiCaprio), a bomb expert who manufactures explosives for the infamous French 75 who liberates immigrant detention centers while professing dialogue you would hear from 1970's radicals.  The leader, who is Bob's girlfriend is Perfidia (Taylor), who has some fun of her own when she encounters the center's commanding officer Col. Steven Lockjaw (Penn) and forces him to will himself to have an erection before taking him prisoner.  Lockjaw doesn't exactly object and we sense he likes Perfidia, which he makes clear when he runs into her later on after a botched robbery attempt.  The tables turn.

However, Bob and Perfidia have a child named Willa (Infiniti) and Bob takes her parenting duties far more seriously than Perfidia, who would rather be committing violence in the name of leftist ideology.  But as mentioned in DiCaprio's movie The Departed, when facing a loaded gun, does it matter whether a cop or criminal is holding it?  Years pass, Bob is in hiding and Perfidia has long fled to Mexico after turning state's evidence to Lockjaw after being captured during the robbery.  Willa is now a teenager looking to have friends and attend school functions while Bob smokes copious amounts of weed and drinks himself into a stupor.  When Lockjaw tracks down Bob and Willa, Bob calls on his old revolutionary buddies to find out her location, and due to the years of inactivity and drug use, he can't remember key passwords.

One Battle After Another also works as biting political satire with DiCaprio providing multiple dimensions as the zonked Bob, but the movie belongs to Penn, who grunts his lines and walks with a distinguished limp.  Seeing how he moves in civilian clothing vs. military fatigues gives us two vastly different sides of Lockjaw.  He's something of a mad dog who can't wait to be unleashed and is also conflicted up to his eyeballs, especially when he encounters someone like Perfidia, who makes his blood boil.  There is also a hinted connection between Willa and Lockjaw which casts a new light on the proceedings.

If anything detracts from One Battle After Another, it's the 2 hour, 40 minute running time.  It begins to feel bloated at times, and could use a good 20-minute trimming.  But it also treads into Dr. Strangelove territory, with characters who do nothing but fight in the war room, because what else would they have to do to make themselves useful?