The best actors make fools of themselves. The Bugs Bunny x-gene, able to physically transform into whatever the story demands. They can flatten under a falling piano, shoot like a rocket into space from stepping one toe into boiling hot water, rizz up a threat to their lives. Hover over a cliff. Etc.
One Battle After Another is a 3-man weave of some of our greatest actors in their most Looney Tunes form.
Benicio del Toro creates Sergio St. Carlos—a karate instructor we meet, briefly, after a long Teyanna Taylor, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, strange, festishy, love triangle, 16 years before del Toro’s character is introduced.
The unfortunate and lovely result of that nasty love triangle, Chase Infiniti’s character must escape her high school dance to avoid capture by the US Military. After searching her home, they notice she takes karate lessons—B-lining to her Sensei for answers.
From this moment on, my entire focus is on Sensei Sergio—the pace accelerated—suddenly starting to orchestrate the entire sanction city of Baktan Cross, under siege of a faux-immigration raid; Spanish, no subtitles, positioning and herding, and organizing a sophisticated illegal immigrant refugee system—all while Leonardo DiCaprio whines for an outlet to charge his phone.
It’s a ballet.
Chicago Symphony Orchestra score-worthy. Radio City Music Hall should reenact his scenes for this year’s Christmas Spectacular.
Benicio del Toro, charm on 1000x, turns a predictably militant leader into a tired, desensitized, cool, calm and collected alcoholic—never forgetting to sip from his Modelo can. “Latino Heat, you come with me”, sharply and condescendingly calling over a skateboarder to help DiCaprio escape from the rooftops. (It doesn’t work)
In a movie starting with revolutionaries blowing up an immigration detention center and the officer obsessed with humping one of them, Sensei provides humanity to the struggle these people are fighting for or against.
Exploding the cages is good. This is a pro-explode all cages community.
But there’s far more to freedom than literal cell bars. Sensei built an entire infrastructure to house, feed and protect these men and women whose biggest sin was being born in the wrong latitude and longitude.
All while working in support of the revolutionaries he reveres. Leo gets captured. Every Spanish woman working within the cogs of the machine, all aid in Leo’s escape. When Sensei picks him up, he asks for a selfie with him. Each and every one of them willing to sacrifice their own safety to help someone they deem allies in the greater cause. Liberation.
Benicio del Toro is the heart and spine of One Battle After Another. The complicated moral core, the backbone holding the whole thing together.
But Benicio is special. He smirks and you sit in your chair smirking along with him.
Sensei Sergio catches a DWI and hits the silliest, cartoon line of the year.
a few small beers monday
pic.twitter.com/LCWUq6SUNa— captain jefferey fink (@mikehunnidproof) September 29, 2025
A few small beers with Sensei would be a blessing.
Ghetto Pat
Leonardo DiCaprio becomes “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun, motivated by his lust for his girlfriend, Teyana Taylor—who cares way more about the mission than he does; a member of the French 75 revolutionary group, tasked with setting up the explosives. Teyana’s family warns Pat, she’s a “runner”, knowing Pat can step away from this whenever he wants but it’s not the case for black people.
Teyana gets caught by her not-so-secret admirer, Sean Penn, flipping on her colleagues—leading to Pat disappearing with their child, changing identities and never seeing Teyana again.
16 years later, Leonard DiCaprio goes mask-off.
Daffy Duck for the remainder of the film.
No one in the game right now better at pathetic.
The last quarter of Wolf of Wall Street was the slow reveal. Margot Robbie throwing water in his face while he screams shirtless on his knees in their bed. Killers of the Flower Moon was the coming-out party—the pitiful loser, feigning love to steal a woman’s land because he’s supposed to.
One Battle After Another was the perfection of the craft.
In need of the location for the rendezvous point, where he’d reunite with his daughter, Pat Calhoun, now Bob Ferguson, claims after years of drinking and smoking weed, he can no longer recall the password codes necessary to communicate with French 75 HQ.
Leo’s reaches Tom and Jerry level frustration, bursting out of his skin, shouting at a payphone. Flailing through Sensei’s home, desperately looking for a place to charge his phone—hitting everyone with a “what’s up, homie?” as they scramble around him.
At one point, he smokes weed in his car, sits down for a parent-teacher conference; the weed in his body fills the theater with marijuana fumes, before he openly weeps at his daughter’s teacher.
Ghetto Pat should be no one’s hero but when the smoke settles, he understands, well, the smoke never actually settles, allowing his daughter to join the French 75, continuing her mother’s legacy.
Leonardi DiCaprio was one “sufferin succotash” away from a flawless performance.
Lockjaw
Sean Penn passed my screen in the Netflix doc for Charlie Sheen. Carton of milk in the sun. Health questionable. You never want to look worse than Charlie Sheen. See every doctor in town. And the next town over. Someone has to be able to do something.
Little did I know, the man with stage 10 everything, was the perfect actor to play Col. Steven J. Lockjaw.
Lockjaw, a military officer obsessed with Teyana Taylor, abusing his authority to force an affair with her, used as an escape hatch. Puts Teyana in witness protection after she gives up the French 75, seduced into believing they had some strange, gross relationship, lulled to complacency until she escapes into Mexico—never to be seen again.
Fast forward 16 years, Lockjaw’s dreams are floating under his nose, lifting him off his feet to a windowsill containing membership to Christmas Adventurers—a secret society of white supremacists, until they catch wind of his relationship with Teyana and their potential child together.
Sean Penn is silly top to bottom. A goofy haircut and a Napoleon complex; Chase Infiniti, his biological mixed daughter he is tasked with murdering, points out his too tight clothes and the lifts in his shoes. Insecurity oozes through his performance.
I don’t know how Sean Penn does it but he walks around rooms with forced confidence, struggling with pebbles in his socks or, like, hemorrhoids putting a hitch in his giddy up.
He is vile, licking his comb before running it through his Kovu lion cub mane of white hair.
Unpleasant and pitiful, Sean Penn is the Elmer Fudd/Yosemite Sam One Battle After Another needed—stepping on rakes, slipping on banana peels, Acme devices exploding in his face.
I recommend rewatching this movie from Sensei Sergio’s perspective—especially if you don’t love lines like “this pussy don’t pop for you”, but Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn put on a cartoon comedy masterclass.
Let’s not make this whole shit about guys.
Real quick shout out to Teyana Taylor. Perfida Beverly Hills wasn’t an easy character to depict; most of her complicated thoughts, struggles and decisions internal. “Go be hot, cool and mysterious” isn’t the easiest task for everyone. There’s a Palantir list sorted by actresses who couldn’t pull this off.
Chase Infinit displayed the tools to be here as long as she wants. At 26 years old, sky’s the limit. I mean, keep answering the phone when Paul Thomas Anderson calls and you’ll have a decent filmography under your belt.
Regina Hall’s character is the true tragedy of this film. Dedicating her life to a cause, surviving Perfida’s judas contract, only to be perpwalked to protect the snitch’s daughter because it was the right thing to do. #JusticeForReginaHall.
Oh, and shout out one of the Haim sisters.
Long Live Sensei Sergio. I will be having a few small beers in his honor.
Thanks for reading.
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