{"id":10892,"date":"2025-09-26T21:25:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T01:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/reelfaith\/?p=10892"},"modified":"2026-03-03T18:20:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T22:20:13","slug":"review-one-battle-delivers-fireworks-and-stokes-division","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/reelfaith\/2025\/09\/review-one-battle-delivers-fireworks-and-stokes-division.html","title":{"rendered":"Review: “One Battle” Delivers Fireworks\u2014and Stokes Division"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s latest, \u201cOne Battle After Another,\u201d is as explosive as its title suggests. Leonardo DiCaprio anchors the story as Bob, a burned-out revolutionary raising the daughter his radical girlfriend (Teyana Taylor) left behind. In their early days, Bob and his comrades weren\u2019t idealists in coffee shops\u2014they were domestic terrorists. Bombed detention centers. Firebombed senators\u2019 offices. Bloody bank heists. Their legacy is destruction, and now Bob\u2019s greatest struggle is shielding his daughter from both the past and the system he once fought.<\/p>\n

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LEONARDO DI CAPRIO as Bob Ferguson in \u201cOne Battle After Another.\u201d A Warner Bros. Pictures Release.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The timing of \u201cOne Battle\u201d couldn\u2019t be worse. At a moment when real-life political violence is at a fever pitch, Anderson delivers a film that sympathizes with characters who maim and even kill in the name of \u201cthe cause.\u201d While, in the real world, national leaders have been calling for unity, dialing down rhetoric, rejecting hate. Yet, here at the cinema, arrives a two-and-a-half-hour hand grenade lobbed straight into the conversation. Whatever its artistic merits, \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d risks normalizing the very extremism the country is desperate to escape.<\/p>\n

That said, the characters do suffer the consequences of their actions to a certain degree. And Anderson still knows how to stage a spectacle. The cast is stacked: Sean Penn as a sinister, self-righteous government operative, Benicio Del Toro in a slippery role that may be savior or trafficker depending on how you read it, and Regina Hall lending sharp gravitas. The action is relentless, and yes, sometimes wickedly funny. My screening crowd roared when the ugliest villains\u2014dripping with xenophobia and hate\u2014met their brutal ends.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s beating heart isn\u2019t the politics or the pyrotechnics. It\u2019s the fragile bond between Bob and his daughter Willa (a breakout turn from Chase Infiniti). Willa is the prize everyone\u2019s fighting over, yet she\u2019s just a teenager desperate for normalcy. Bob\u2019s fierce devotion to her, his desperate insistence that she see another tomorrow, gives the film its true weight. Without that father-daughter story, \u201cOne Battle\u201d would collapse under its own fire and fury.<\/p>\n

For me, though\u2014and I suspect for many others\u2014the politics overshadow the story. \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d may earn praise as a daring, even classic Anderson entry. But its willingness to pour gasoline on an already blazing America is a choice I can\u2019t quite overlook.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne Battle After Another,\u201d directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, and Chase Infiniti, releases this weekend from Warner Brothers Entertainment. It is rated R for violence and pervasive language.<\/p>\n