Rotten Tomatoes: 94%
Movie Meter: 4/10
Release: 2025
Genre: Drama/Action Thriller
Available: HBO Max
I know I’m probably in the minority here, but One Battle After Another did absolutely nothing for me.
And that’s frustrating because look at the people involved. Paul Thomas Anderson directing. Leonardo DiCaprio. Sean Penn. Benicio del Toro. On paper, this should’ve been incredible.
Instead, I spent most of the movie wondering when it was going to end.
DiCaprio plays Bob, a former revolutionary who’s now basically a paranoid burnout living off the grid with his daughter. When his past catches up with him and his daughter disappears, he’s forced back into the world he tried to leave behind.
Leo is good because Leo is pretty much always good. He completely commits to playing this washed-up, constantly overwhelmed mess of a human being, and there are definitely some funny moments that come out of it.
Sean Penn is also completely insane in this movie. I still can’t decide if I mean that as a compliment.
Benicio del Toro was probably my favorite part. He walks into the movie and immediately brings this weird calmness and humor that it desperately needed.
But my biggest problem is that this movie is 2 hours and 41 minutes long, and I felt every second of it.
There is a good movie buried somewhere in here. Maybe even a great one. But there are so many characters, ideas, political themes, bizarre moments and side plots being thrown around that eventually I just stopped caring. The movie constantly feels like it’s building toward something, only to move onto another thing.
And I know there are going to be people who tell me that’s the point.
That’s fine.
I still didn’t like it.
Paul Thomas Anderson obviously knows how to make a movie, and technically there’s a lot here that’s impressive. The performances are good. The filmmaking is good. There are individual scenes that are good.
But being well-made doesn’t automatically mean I enjoyed watching it.
At nearly three hours, One Battle After Another felt less like one battle after another and more like one ending that never came.
Maybe that was the real battle.