One Battle After Another 4K 2025

After winning an Oscar (which was 10 years ago, if you can believe it), Leonardo DiCaprio became even more selective in his roles (nowadays, he doesn't appear in a movie every year) and seemed to change direction. Since 2015, he has not played a single cool guy or handsome man, but has embodied characters who, while still complex and profound, are more likely to be losers: a fading actor in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a soft-spoken scientist in Don't Look Up, a pathetic petty gangster in Killers of the Flower Moon, and now a loving but incompetent father in One Battle After Another, the new film by Paul Thomas Anderson, whose filmography has been on my watch list for a long time, but this film is only the second one I've seen by him after the cult classic There Will Be Blood.

One Battle After Another is an almost three-hour action film, saturated with both drama and quite amusing moments. I definitely laughed out loud a couple of times. The story has a slow first hour, picks up in the second, has a couple of unexpected twists in the third, and a lot of politics with social undertones. There's the migrant problem, evil white men, and strong independent women — everything we've seen many times before. But the agenda doesn't come across as too heavy-handed—after all, it wasn't directed by just anyone. However, it is still there, it's very visible, and if you can't stomach that kind of thing, it's better not to watch it.

The strong point of the film is definitely the actors. Leo, as always, is at his best, Sean Penn plays a complete bastard perfectly, Benicio Del Toro doesn't have many scenes, but he steals them, and even young Chase Infinity (most likely a pseudonym) doesn't get lost among such giants.

And the trend in DiCaprio's roles that I mentioned at the beginning continues here. I won't spoil anything, but I will say that the main conflict in this film is resolved not thanks to the main character, no matter how hard he tries. And I think that's the trick of both this film and Leo's entire filmography in recent years. I'm sure he takes these roles consciously — though I don't know why. Maybe he has some kind of plan. But the films he stars in continue to be high quality, even if none of them, except perhaps Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, are likely to become classics. And considering how rarely he can be seen on the big screen now, each appearance is an event. And as long as that's the case, I don't think there's any point in worrying about his career.