One Battle After Another (2025)

One Battle After Another (2025)

“From here on in, it's one battle after another."

“Viva la revolution.”

“It's your dad Willa”

-One Battle After Another (2025)

At first glance, it may seem completely out of place to say this, but One Battle After Another is an enormously heartwarming and tremendously engaging political satire. Once the film reaches its stride you come to realize a truth, politics should never replace the love of family. In a way, Willa and Bob’s father daughter relationship is a touching reminder of the true purpose of freedom. Freedom isn't the ability to do whatever we want. It is the ability to do what is best. Freedom asks us to seek the good of the other. Here, then, is where this film's satirical method comes into play.
One Battle After Another uses satire to elevate rather than to denigrate its characters. At least from a narrative perspective humanity is the focus point of the film's ideological gaze. Even when the satirical method is at the extreme, as it is with the film's antagonist, Col. Stephen J. Lockjaw. One Battle After Another never loses its internal focus on the dignity of the human person. Lockjaw personifies what occurs when a person's dignity is objectified to achieve personal and political gain. He is the window by which One Battle After Another opens onto the world. In effect, Col. Stephen J. Lockjaw calls both sides of the political aisle to re-examine how misrepresentation and objectification are defining factors in the dehumanization of a society, in both the cultural and global sense of the word.
In the end, One Battle After Another is a remarkably charming father daughter story housed in a well executed, political and social satire that supports its characters, rather than dominating them. To some, the film's central political through line of an extremist turned loving father may seem a bit dull-toothed. Though, the film's lack of bite in certain areas, skillfully conveys the film's central theme. Director Paul Thomas Anderson and his team beautifully and succinctly ask us to consider a simple, yet multi-layered question. Why do we fight One Battle After Another?...
This film's quandary is yours to answer. Though, in my humble estimation, we should all fight for the dignity of a person, not for their denigration or destruction.

Rated R for pervasive language, violence, sexual content (There is no nudity per say, but there are quite few prolonged sexual situations and verbal references. Mostly contained in the films opening 30 minutes.), and drug use

I found One Battle After Another to be Insightfully irreverent, comically thought-provoking and in the end, wonderfully meaningful. I hope in some way you do too.

One Battle After Another is available to stream on HBO Max with a subscription, it is also available to purchase on any video streaming service. It can be purchased physically on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD disc.