The true political fights of One Battle After Another unfortunately happen on the edges of the frame

One Battle After Another, written, produced, and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, is among the most exciting Hollywood films to hit cinemas this year. It is technically brilliant, with stellar performances, a heavy-hitting score by Radiohead great Jonny Greenwood, and impeccable cinematography.

On NPR, Justin Chang called it “prescient and political”. Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times crowned it the artistic antidote to fascism.

But these claims mistake political theatre for genuine engagement.

One Battle After Another’s action-packed prologue, set 16 years ago, charts the dizzying excitement and painful unravelling of anarchist terrorists The French 75. The group funds the firepower to liberate immigration detention centres on the US/Mexico border by robbing banks.

Fiery Perfidia (Teyana Taylor) embodies the revolutionary movement’s highs and lows. She triggers a lethal competition between two men: wannabe anarchist and bomb specialist Ghetto Pat (Leonardo DiCaprio) and deportation enthusiast Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn), a caricature of far-right militarised masculinity.

After ratting out her comrades to avoid a lengthy prison sentence, she abandons them and her newborn daughter, Charlene (Chase Infiniti).

Forced into hiding, Pat and Charlene adopt aliases (Bob and Willa Ferguson) and settle into “normal” life in fictional sanctuary city, Baktan Cross. Fast forward to the present, and the question of which man technically fathered Willa reignites the conflict between the two men – and the political extremes they represent.

Focused mainly on these dysfunctional triangles, the film overlooks intriguing stories on its margins: Anderson neglects the political motivations of the French 75’s mother hen, Deandra (Regina Hall), and Willa’s karate teacher, Sensei Sergio St Carlos (Benicio del Toro).

Centring their commitments to the collective good would have radically shifted the film’s take on political action.

Missed opportunities

In the wake of Perfidia’s betrayal, Deandra helps Bob and Willa evade arrest. Later, she shepherds Willa to the “Order of the Sacred Beavers” to protect her from Lockjaw.

Deandra lacks a backstory, which forces Hall’s expressive face to pull double duty, filling narrative holes. Exploring what propelled her to political extremism would engage the film in a different kind of politics. She is clearly not attracted by the adrenaline rush of breaking or enforcing the law, but by defending those vulnerable to it.

Sergio plays a similar role, protecting Bob while he’s desperately searching for Willa. This happens during the standout action sequence at the film’s midpoint, when Lockjaw empowers military forces to “round up” the so-called “wetbacks” – a slur against Mexicans living in the United States.

Sergio calmly watches over Bob, who stumbles around in his bathrobe trying to charge his phone and remember a password. At the same time, Sergio manages what he calls a “Latino Harriet Tubman situation” – tunnelling immigrants to the sanctuary of a local church – while repeating his signature mantra “ocean waves” to summon tranquillity in chaos.

The film is clearly more interested in reckless, self-motivated action than either “ocean waves” or Deandra’s revolutionary motto: “women and children first”.

Their underdeveloped stories gesture to a genuinely political film that One Battle After Another doesn’t quite deliver.

Politics should prioritise the interests of large groups over individuals, but this film is in thrall to the seduction of political violence and power for a handful of extreme personalities. This is precisely what we need less of if a just, equitable world is possible to imagine from here.

One Battle After Another’s most blatant misstep involves Taylor’s scene-stealing Perfidia, who is undermined by sexist and racist clichés. She is shot firmly through the male gaze, and her passion for political action is portrayed as a kink.

The film fumbles the opportunity to inject substance into a character that might have shone new light on the racist roots of contemporary immigration debates.

You could argue that the film critiques the misogyny and racism of the culture it represents. But multiple black women characters seem to only represent their racialised sex appeal for white men.

Because the film portrays Perfidia as driven by lust for explosions and sex, her musing about “trying to change the world” in the film’s final act comes off as shallow.

A frustrating end

One Battle After Another offers familiar seductions: sexy women with guns, visceral car chases, repellent villains who get what they deserve in the end.

When unlawfully deployed military forces clash with the people who live in Baktan Cross, the timeliness of a film that took years to develop strikes a chord.

But the film’s politics are thin and rely too heavily on spectacle. Featuring people of colour in cages between scenes that rehearse familiar hero/villain dramas isn’t revolutionary. It doesn’t inspire viewers to imagine a society that operates differently than this one.

One Battle After another is a work of high-quality cinema that presciently depicts a present-day US rocked by internal conflict. But the film mainly invests in formulaic power struggles. See it for the action – but don’t go expecting a deep dive into contemporary politics. If this is “the film that meets this political moment”, then at least it provides a clearer picture of the shaky ground we’re on.

Missy Molloy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.