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Cinema Review: One Battle After Another (2025) – an exhilarating revolutionary romp that lacks the depth of those films it attempts to emulate!

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Cinema Review: One Battle After Another (2025)

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Written by Paul Thomas Anderson

Inspired by Vineland by Thomas Pynchon

Produced by Adam Somner, Sara Murphy, Paul Thomas Anderson

Main Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti, Wood Harris, Tony Goldwyn, Kevin Tighe, Shayna McHayle, etc.

Cinematography by Michael Bauman

Music by Jonny Greenwood

*** CONTAINS SPOILERS ***

It’s a brave filmmaker that quotes one of the greatest revolutionary films of all time during it’s runtime, namely Battle of Algiers (1966). But Paul Thomas Anderson’s formidable cinematic career more than earns him the right to quote a film as towering as The Battle of Algiers (1966) in his latest release One Battle After Another (2025).

Across works like Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999), he has demonstrated a mastery of ensemble storytelling and emotional crescendo; with Punch-Drunk Love (2002) he revealed a gift for intimate, offbeat romance; and in There Will Be Blood (2007) and Phantom Thread (2017) he proved himself one of the most rigorous visual stylists and psychological dramatists of his generation. Such a body of work grants him the authority to converse with cinema’s political masterpieces, even if his more recent Licorice Pizza (2021) felt comparatively diffuse and lacking in urgency. His filmography, at its strongest, stands as evidence of a filmmaker deeply attuned to the legacies and possibilities of the medium.

Having said that, Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1966) wields revolutionary power through its raw immediacy, embedding viewers in the lived experience of anti-colonial struggle with a documentary-like realism that blurs the line between record and re-creation. By contrast, Anderson’s One Battle After Another (2025) approaches revolution less as lived history than as a cinematic genre to be emulated, drawing on the tropes and textures of upheaval without grounding itself in the direct urgency of political struggle. Where Pontecorvo conjures revolution as something happening before our eyes, Anderson refracts it through the prism of style, making revolution as much a matter of aesthetic construction as lived reality. It is during its lengthy running time extremely entertaining though.

The opening hour is fast-paced and crams in a lot of action and personality. It establishes a fine ensemble cast, strong characters, striking palette and compelling themes which bring to life Anderson’s sharply written and fantastically filmed screenplay. The narrative focuses on “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), lovers and leaders of the far-left French 75, who storm detention centres, bomb banks, and sabotage power grids, while their soon-to-become nemesis—Officer Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn)—becomes erotically obsessed with Perfidia, sparing her life when he catches her planting a bomb in exchange for a sexually masochistic tryst. Thus, begins a warped love/hate triangle and rivalry which provides the backbone for the action.

The second hour pivots sharply after establishing Perfidia as a commanding revolutionary presence. The focus pulls to her daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), some sixteen years later, now living off the grid and avoiding all but the most basic technology out of fear of surveillance. ‘Pothead’ Pat, has withered into a paranoid and barely functioning stoner-alcoholic, leaving Willa to emerge as the steadier, more mentally resilient figure in their fractured household. The film undeniably suffers from the absence of Perfidia’s charisma and drive, yet it regains momentum when the now Colonel Lockjaw revives his obsessive pursuit, setting the stage for a tense reconfiguration of the story’s revolutionary stakes.

The acting in One Battle After Another (2025) crackles with intensity, led by standout turns from Taylor, Penn, and crafty scene-stealer, Benicio Del Toro. Further, Anderson’s casting team find some amazing supporting military personnel who deliver with uncanny authenticity. Sean Penn’s performance as a swaggering officer radiates brute masculinity—his very walk and gait dripping with testosterone and worthy of awards consideration on their own. Leonardo DiCaprio, meanwhile, folds another eccentric, messy, and deeply contradictory figure into his already remarkable CV, a creation that resonates with the layered complexity of his recent work in Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). He is actually far more hilarious here, as demonstrated in his desperate attempts to overcome the revolutionary helpline he calls for instructions.

Overall, One Battle After Another (2025) works best as a searing, darkly funny revolutionary black comedy, blending sexual, military, conspiracy, and social politics into a heady mix of action, crime, road movie, and romance tropes. The result is a wildly entertaining visual and musical feast, even if it stops short of delivering true socio-political depth. While the film’s closing stretch leans into deliberate plot ambiguities that complicate its resolution, Anderson ultimately serves up a combative cinematic blast—stylish, sharp, and exhilarating—if just shy of a bona fide classic.

Mark: 8.5 out of 11

Cinema, Classic Film Reviews, Films That Got Away, Reviews

CLASSIC FILM REVIEW: THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (1966)

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CLASSIC FILM REVIEW: THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (1966)

Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo

Written by Franco Solinas

Story by Franco Solinas and Gillo Pontecorvo – Based on Souvenirs de la Bataille d’Alger by Saadi Yacef

Produced by Antonio Musu and Saadi Yacef

Main Cast: Jean Martin, Saadi Yacef, Brahim Haggiag, Tommaso Neri and ensemble.

Cinematography by Marcello Gatti

Edited by Mario Morra and Mario Serandrei

Music by Ennio Morricone and Gillo Pontecorvo

*** MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS ***

The Battle of Algiers (1966) was one of the greatest films I had NEVER seen. Now, The Battle of Algiers (1966) is one of the greatest films I have EVER seen. I’m embarrassed to admit that I had, for some unknown reason, not found the time to watch it. But wow, the “best films of all time” lists it appears on are NOT wrong. For sure, I don’t always get on with the critics’ list released by respected publications such as Sight and Sound, nevertheless with this incendiary work of cinema I am in total agreement of its deserved high ranking. In fact it could be higher.

The Battle of Algiers (1966) is set during a particularly brutal period of the Algerian War of Independence which occurred between 1954 and 1962. It is not a conflict I am too familiar with historically, nonetheless, I am aware of the desire by the Algerian National Liberation Front to decolonize themselves from French rule. Their demands were rejected by French leaders, thus the Algerian people took to the streets to wage a guerrilla campaign against both civilian and military targets.

Like many a bloody conflict lives, families, businesses, homes, properties and animals were savagely hurt and left irreparably damaged. As the prolonged fighting ensued in Algiers both sides resorted to more extreme combat measures. But with Algiers becoming a politically adverse battlefield, France’s external allies, such as the USA, moved their support away and eventually the Algerian people would overcome the hostile landlords. For the French, the Algerian rebels were terrorists. But remember, one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.

A short review on a humble film blog cannot pretend to imagine the currency of horror, grief and pain encapsulated within this brutal conflict. Yet, incredibly, Gillo Pontercorvo, as well as producing a searing indictment against the barbarity of war, has in The Battle of Algiers (1966) made palpable such horror, grief and pain through sheer formal cinematic ingenuity. In two hours, Pontercorvo and his production team, employ a stark black-and-white-film-documentary-style, non-professional actors, chopping episodic narrative, percussive and beating sounds, handheld cameras, vérité production design and dynamic, dialectic montage to spectacularly bring the psychological power of war to the screen. Not to mention the iconic Morricone and Pontercorvo composition which pulsates throughout the soundtrack.

Intrinsically focussed on events in the Casbah, Algiers between 1954 and 1957, as the story is bookended from the perspective of Ali la Pointe (Brahim Haggiag). La Pointe is a petty criminal who is politically radicalized while in prison, but becomes a formidable force in the fight. The narrative events display a variety of bombings he organizes against the French and his attacks lead the French to bringing in experienced soldier, Lieutenant-Colonel Mathieu (the sole professional actor, Jean Martin). The paratrooper commander is tasked with bringing down the Algerian Liberation Front and his methods of torturing prisoners soon begin to turn the bloody tide.

I cannot overstate how moved I was emotionally and intellectually by The Battle of Algiers (1966). It is momentous filmmaking and made me feel both a fraud and horribly depressed at how evil human beings can behave. I am a fraud because I am safely able to live out my privileged life thankfully free of the horror I have witnessed in the film. Moreover, it is so depressing that we never learn as conflict continues to blight this poisoned planet we exist on. Lastly, Pontercorvo, redefines for me the job a what a director does. The Battle of Algiers (1966) is a pinnacle of how filmmaking style and form can match the heartfelt agony of the narrative themes on show. It is not only one of the greatest anti-war films of all time, but simply one of the most complete films ever made.