SPOLER ALERT with Jimmy Nichols

One Battle After Another

When you look at the movies from 2025, the one with the most Oscar nominations is “Sinners” with 16. However, following closely behind Ryan Coogler’s masterpiece is Paul Thomas Anderson’s magnum opus, “One Battle After Another.” 

Receiving some of the Oscar nominations are Leonardo DiCaprio for Best Actor, Thomas Anderson for Best Director, Teyana Taylor for Best Supporting Actress and Sean Penn for Best Supporting Actor. Each of these nominations is deserved and after watching both movies, the Oscars will be a tight battle between “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another.” 

The movie starts focusing on Taylor’s character, Perfidia Beverly Hills, the leader of a left-wing political organization known as French 75. They believe in open borders, non-limited healthcare and anti-oppressive government.  

The group is attacking an immigration detention facility along the U.S.-Mexico border. While there, Perfidia takes captive the ICE agent in charge, Colonel Lockjaw, played by Sean Penn. 

Her brief encounter with Lockjaw makes him obsessed with her. He does not care about the crimes she and the French 75 are committing, only about her. 

When he sees her with DiCaprio’s character, Pat Calhoun, he becomes irate and set on having control over her and killing Pat. Perfidia, meanwhile, is enjoying the difference her rebellion is making and being with Pat. 

She becomes pregnant and acts like it is nothing, continuing to blow up banks and wage war with the government. After the baby girl is born, Pat steps back from the rebellion because he is a father now, but Perfidia has post-partum depression and is jealous she is no longer Pat’s number one priority. 

She dives deeper into the rebellion and is eventually caught. To save herself, she rats on the entire French 75 and is responsible for many of their deaths and arrests. 

The government places her in witness protection with Lockjaw as her handler. Dealing with the guilt of betraying her friends in arms, she drops off the face of the planet, never to be seen again in the movie. 

Pat, meanwhile, takes the baby far away and adopts a new identity for them in a sanctuary city, a city that protects immigrants from answering questions from ICE. Now, Bob and Wilma Ferguson, the two try to live off the grid to avoid the detection of Lockjaw. 

The two avoided his detection for 16 years. However, when Lockjaw receives an offer to join a white supremacist group, he narrows in on finding the two and buries the skeletons in his closet once and for all. 

This is where the movie picks up and never slows down. Bob spends the entire movie trying to track down and save his daughter from Lockjaw, while Wilma is confronted with the truth of her mother, who she thought died a hero of the revolution. 

The action is non-stop as Bob is forced out of retirement and addiction, trying to remember all the details of the rebellion. The movie dives deep into the complexities of the world and how rebellions shift over the years. 

In the film, ICE is shown manipulating protests to become violent so they can attack protesters. On the flip side, the French 75 are shown becoming bureaucratic in some of their practices and losing focus on what they are fighting for. 

This movie comes at a time when there is a discussion about the practices of ICE and whether far-left protestors have lost their original focus. Without spoiling too much, the movie ends with the rebellion going back to its original purpose of opposing the government. 

After watching the movie, audience members are left speechless, trying to process not only the violence but also the plot twists the last hour has in store.  

The writing is phenomenal, and Leonardo DiCaprio showed why he is considered one of the greatest actors of all time. While personally, Michael B. Jordan would still be my winner for Best Actor for his performance in “Sinners,” DiCaprio earned a strong second-place finish and would not be a shocking winner. 

The Oscars this year will be interesting, as it will be, in my opinion, just a competition between these two movies. 

In this present-day climate, “One Battle After Another” is a must-watch and keeps the audience captivated the entire time.