Counter Culture

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor, Sean Penn, Chase Infiniti, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is a sprawling, politically charged action thriller set in a dystopian near-future America. Loosely adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, the film follows ex-revolutionary “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio), now living under the alias Bob Ferguson, as he attempts to protect his teenage daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) from the violent resurgence of his old nemesis, Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn). The narrative unfolds across two timelines—first chronicling the exploits of the radical French 75 militia, led by Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), and later jumping sixteen years into the future, where Bob and Willa live in hiding in the sanctuary city of Baktan Cross.

The film opens with Perfidia storming an immigration detention centre, humiliating Lockjaw and igniting a personal vendetta that drives much of the plot. As the French 75 carry out bombings and raids on political and financial institutions, the film revels in its revolutionary fervor. But when Perfidia is captured and coerced into betraying her comrades, the group disbands, leaving Bob and Willa to navigate a militarized landscape haunted by Lockjaw’s obsession and the looming threat of the white supremacist and elitist Christmas Adventurers Club (think shades of Skull and Bones).

While One Battle After Another has been championed in some circles as a bold statement of resistance, it risks becoming a footnote rather than a lasting classic. Its most glaring flaw lies in its ideological imbalance: it vividly humanizes its radical protagonists but dehumanizes its antagonists to the point of parody.

Sean Penn’s Colonel Lockjaw is a grotesque caricature—his later melted jawline and serve as visual shorthand for moral corruption. This use of physical disfigurement as a marker of villainy is a trope long criticized by progressive critics, making its deployment here feel hypocritical. Lockjaw’s motivations are thinly sketched, reduced to sexual obsession and racial insecurity. His early sexual humiliation—forced to masturbate and mocked during Perfidia’s raid—followed by his later disfigurement, left me uneasy. It’s not just that the film indulges in cruelty; it’s that it does so without reflection, as if degradation were a narrative reward.

The film also carries a strange undercurrent of ’70s blaxploitation aesthetics, particularly in its handling of Black women. Perfidia’s revolutionary charisma is undeniable—Teyana Taylor delivers a ferocious, scene-stealing performance—but her sexualisation feels stylised to the point of fetishisation. Her romance with Bob is framed in neon-drenched slow motion, backed by retro-funk scoring that evokes the visual grammar of blaxploitation cinema. It’s as if Anderson is borrowing the aesthetic of radical Black resistance without fully grappling with its political or emotional weight. Even Willa, the biracial daughter whose disappearance drives the second half of the film, is more plot device than character, her interiority sacrificed for Bob’s paranoia.

More troubling is the film’s apparent glorification of leftist violence. The French 75 execute public officials, destroy infrastructure, and silence dissent—all in the name of justice. Yet the narrative rarely pauses to interrogate the ethics of these actions. One scene in particular—where Perfidia fatally shoots a bank security guard during a botched heist—might have offered a moment of reckoning. The guard is portrayed as an ordinary worker, reaching instinctively for his weapon. His death could have given pause for thought about the real-world consequences of revolutionary violence. But it barely registers in the plot. There’s no reflection, no fallout, no grief. The film moves on, as if collateral damage were an acceptable cost of ideological purity.

That said, one of the funniest moments in the film—perhaps unintentionally—is when Bob, too high to remember the rendezvous codes, calls a contact who accuses him of making him feel unsafe. The contrast between older revolutionaries who once ran with the Black Panthers and all-too-precious woke liberals is ripe with comic potential. Anderson touches on it briefly, but it’s a missed opportunity. The generational tension—between lived radicalism and performative progressivism—could have added real texture to the film’s political satire.

The film’s climax—a high-octane car chase across desert roads—features Willa escaping from Lockjaw’s forces with help from Avanti Q, an Indigenous bounty hunter turned ally. Lockjaw is ultimately assassinated by his own white supremacist peers, not for his brutality, but for violating their racial purity codes. It’s a moment that underscores the film’s central irony: even the villains are victims of their own ideology. But this insight is buried beneath layers of spectacle and stylization.

In the end, while One Battle After Another is being promoted as a defining film of the moment, I don’t think it will be remembered that way. It’s simply too one-sided and too tethered to the present political climate to endure. Anderson has crafted a work of passion, yes—but passion without restraint risks becoming propaganda. And cinema deserves better than that.

Reviewed by Pat Harrington

Picture credit: By Warner Bros. Pictures – https://www.cinematerial.com/movies/one-battle-after-another-i30144839/p/gx8enlln, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79721611