In February of 1990, Thomas Pynchon would release his novel, Vineland*, a political satire set in 1984 — the year of Ronald Reagan’s reelection — with flashbacks to the 1960s that portrayed the younger days of the book's characters. Fast forward to 2025, and after over 20 years of deliberating how to adapt the novel for the big screen whilst modernising the subject matter for the present day, Paul Thomas Anderson, often referred to as just PTA, has delivered his latest picture, *One Battle After Another.
Though PTA is no stranger to directly adapting Pynchon novels (Inherent Vice*), *One Battle After Another instead pulls ideas from Pynchon’s Vineland, and combines them with some other concepts that PTA had been floating around in his head. The problem he had with tackling a straight adaptation of Vineland was that it was a book written in the 80s and about the 60s, whilst he was attempting to take it on in the 2000s, and was unsure of how the story would look all those years on. What he would come to realise however, was that some things simply never change.
“Whatever seems to be happening politically seems to always be the same. Same shit, different year” — Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025.
In terms of the other concepts he had in mind, in the director's own words, when he first started thinking about the film the end goal was to “Write an action car-chase movie”. At the same time, he had an idea for a female revolutionary character. When you take all of these elements and mix them together, you get something that looks a little like his latest movie, and by his own admission, “For 20 years I had been pulling on all these different threads, and in a way, none of them ever left me”.
To help him put all of these pieces together, he had Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio del Toro, Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall, Sean Penn, and Chase Infiniti all bringing the project to life.
For DiCaprio in particular, this collaboration is an incredibly special one. Not just because of their statuses as not just because of their stature as some of the greatest in their respective roles, but also because DiCaprio famously declined the opportunity to star as the lead in PTA’s Boogie Nights. With DiCaprio recently stating in an interview for Esquire that passing up on the film is the biggest regret of his career. Going on to say that the film was “A profound movie of my generation”. For Chase Infiniti however, who stars as Willa Ferguson, this might be an even more momentous occasion. With the 25-year-old’s starring role… quite the debut, I might add. Benicio del Toro brings a cool and collected energy with some fantastic moments of humour, whilst Regina Hall unquestionably presents some heart and soul to the story. Teyana Taylor is absolutely electric for every second she is on the screen, just totally captivating every scene and making it her own. The standout of the entire film however, might just be Sean Penn, who looks to have another guaranteed Oscar nomination coming his way, with a serious possibility that he goes on to claim his third Academy Award this March.
Penn, as Col. Steven J. Lockjaw acts as the main antagonist of the story, and my god is it quite the villain performance. Lockjaw is a pathetic and incredibly insecure man in a position of power, who likes to abuse his authority to better suit his personal agendas. If that sounds familiar, that’s probably because those kinds of people occupy some of the most powerful positions in the entire world. Constantly throwing their toys out of the pram and proving to the world that, despite the masculine front they put on every single day, they remain that small, whiny child that never quite got the attention they needed. A role crafted to absolute perfection by PTA, and laid out on screen by Penn in a manner that is frighteningly accurate.
Lockjaw is just one of the many narrative beats that mirror the world we’ve been living in since even before Pynchon’s Vineland released. The portrayal of the far-right supremacists that have gotten so drunk on power that they think they’re invincible, the abuse of immigrants, the radical activism of the far-left, it’s all so uncompromisingly bold and reminds us all that action is needed if bullies, no matter the scale, are to be defeated. And yet, despite all of its political commentary and constantly intense sequences, it manages to be just about the funniest movie you’ll see all year. And Jonny Greenwood’s score? Yeah, that’s all, just yeah. Flows through every scene seamlessly, keeping the movie going at a breakneck speed and providing an emotional backdrop that makes you feel the weight of every moment just that little bit more.
It goes without saying too, like all PTA pictures, the visuals are otherworldly. PTA himself acted as a co-cinematographer on this project alongside Michael Bauman — whose work you can see next on the upcoming Anthony Bourdain biopic, Tony, starring Dominic Sessa as the lead.
I was lucky enough to be one of the few to catch this in VistaVision, which felt like quite the honour. But regardless of the format, the film promises to suck you in and take you on what might end up being the ride of the year, perhaps the decade, even. An expertly crafted action classic with an 80s feel and yet a very modern narrative that’ll have you on the edge of your seat and moments later uncontrollably laughing. A wild ride that is one of the absolute defining pictures of the decade, if not THE defining movie of the 2020s so far. A movie that once again proves PTA to be one of the very best to ever do it. And come award season, I think it’s fair to expect One Battle After Another to do some serious damage.