Hollywood studios believe that nothing brightens up the action movie more than motorcar chases, guns, and rude humour. A sprawling, technically outstanding, all-you-can-eat buffet of a film released this weekend hits all three with vigorous enthusiasm. Knowing that “One Battle After Another” (Warner Bros), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse, is an adaptation of a four-hundred-page political-satire novel from the mid-nineteen-eighties Reagan years helps to explain the vast cast of characters and, from time to time, unwieldy scope.
There are houses of the safe- and secret- varieties; a courthouse and a convent; a detention centre and a production line; temporary tents for migrants and the military alike; trucks, helicopters and a bumper assortment of motorcars; a hospital and a morgue; houses of all shapes and sizes containing hidden- and trap-doors, secret entrances and underground tunnels.
The prelude to the film reminded me of an adaptation of a completely different but much more recent book by an influential environmental and political writer, Andreas Malm, “How to Blow up a Pipeline” (2022). Both films take as their starting point a widely supported premise that non-violent protest ultimately fails—only direct, revolutionary action leads to real change. In the first film, environmental activists sabotage an oil pipeline in Texas. Here, the political target is the U.S.-Mexico border. The action itself is much more centred on people—springing detainees from internment camps, hiding refugees within sanctuary cities, roaring “stick ‘em up” before robbing customers at capitalist banks, and so forth. The couple at the centre of the story, two of the group’s leaders, played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Teyana Taylor, get caught by the military, “rat” on their comrades, and enter a witness-protection program under the auspices of Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, played by Sean Penn. (The names of the characters are changed at this point. Throughout, I use the second name for the character Mr DiCaprio plays, “Bob,” to avoid confusion.) But they quickly escape. The balance of the film is a marathon, high-octane, snowballing cat-and-mouse game to find and recapture Bob and his daughter, Willa. Many absorbing diversions pepper the plot; half-way through, a white-supremacist group, the Christmas Adventurers Club—“You are superior to all other human beings”—try to recruit Colonel Lockjaw; later, Willa, played by Chase Infiniti, arrives at a convent for safe refuge, only to discover that the ordained pursue an odd side hustle—“They grow weed. They’re nuns!”
I cannot tell how much of the dialog is directly quoted from the book by Thomas Pynchon upon which the movie is based (I haven’t read it). But the screenplay is the standout success, closely followed by the sensational musical score by Jonny Greenwood. The best lines and the most sure-footed filmmaking involve scenes with Mr DiCaprio or Mr Penn. One scene in which Bob is yelling down a supermarket pay phone—wearing his dressing gown and a pair of oversized sunglasses—at a character called Comrade Josh is hands-down exceptional. Comrade Josh is trying to ascertain whether Bob knows the secret password to unlock certain coordinates. The subsequent verbal assault—“I don’t remember the greeting code because I got … high. Let’s not nitpick over the password. I fried my brain since then. I’m a drug- and alcohol-lover”—first leads to an attempt at logic, “Maybe you should have studied the rebellion text a bit harder,” before a time-out is eventually called: “This is a violation of my safety. A noise trigger!” There are similar cross fires blanketed throughout. Another fabulous scene takes place in a hospital where a pair of nurses help Bob to escape arrest; blink and you miss it.
I have no idea how many scenes there are, or how many individual shots, but I did very much sit up and notice the joins between them. Take the earliest appearance of the Christmas Adventurers Club. The seam between their secret basement—“Dedicated to make the world safe and pure,” “Your duty to racial purification,”—to a podcasting studio from which a Marxist, in contrast, openly broadcasts to the entire world—“Capitalist overlords who are extracting value from your life,”—is technically flawless. But there’s more—a rich, precise detail is added. After the head-bagging and disappearance of the podcaster, it turns out that two children who have been passively watching the hit are part of the resistance. It’s masterful. And to close a marvellously paced scene in the convent—in which Colonel Lockjaw is violently trying to establish whether Willa is, in fact, his daughter—he says to one of his henchmen, “Put my kid in the car.” But instead in a heartbeat the camera shifts to a close-up shot of presumed-dad Bob—Mr DiCaprio with his trademark grimace—behind the wheel of his own car.
It was also this scene that earned the biggest laugh on the evening I was there. “Why is your shirt so tight,” Willa asks Colonel Lockjaw. Mr Penn’s outfitters had a blast. It’s all there: absurdly tight shirts, an ill-fitting blue blazer, over-the-top military gear, preppie turn-of-the-century-corporate-America uniform (button-down blue shirt, red-striped tie, regulation-khaki chinos).
Despite many secondary parts for women (the top-three credited stars are men), “One Battle After Another” remains a largely masculine film. “Men, let’s do what we do,” as Colonel Lockjaw says. If you like silence or reflection in your politics or variety of mood in your action films it isn’t for you (the clue is in the title, I guess). The latest “Mission: Impossible” from earlier in the summer achieves a better balance—and manages perfectly well without the new film’s unwelcome racialised, sexualised inelegant language. What is particularly frustrating is that the detainees at the border are treated as mere extras and are entirely without any independent voice. This misses a precious opening to tell a richer story.
Early on, as the table is set for the feast to come, Bob presents the menu options for the first huge explosion of the film: “I got mortars. I got tear gas. I got whatever you guys need.” “Make it good. Make it bright,” his partner replies. “Impress me!”
Adam Poole
27th September 2025
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