150 Word Review: 'One Battle After Another' (2025)
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The revolution is intoxicating... until the Feds kick down your door. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is an ambitious action-comedy that longs to be political satire but is, at heart, a sentimental father-daughter story. Ideals fade; family is forever.
Leonardo DiCaprio is unexpectedly lovable as Bob, a dope-smoking ex-terrorist whose sins come back to haunt him and his biracial kid, a teen forced to parent her daddy, played with guts by Chase Infiniti. Anderson conjures a believable underground of code-word-loving freedom fighters, though the villains are cartoonish white supremacists, including Sean Penn’s Col. Lockjaw, a bigot with a secret.
Benicio Del Toro is zen as a storefront sensei/hero of the people, while Treyana Taylor stands out as a chaotic rebel leader. Anderson’s big ideas about race and resistance are undercooked, but the filmmaking is inspired: his epic opens with a daring rescue of caged immigrants and never stops.
Random Ranking
Top 5 Leonardo DiCaprio Movies
5. ‘Romeo + Juliet’ (1996)
4. ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (2013)
3. ‘One Battle After Another’ (2025)
2. ‘Catch Me If You Can’ (2002)
1. ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ (2019)
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