Perhaps more so than any other film in recent years, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is the defining work of this crazy current millennium, which comes as a real surprise given what it’s based on. This adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s 35-year-old novel Vineland is helmed by a filmmaker who’s usually more infatuated with recapturing the distant past than holding up a mirror to the present (Punch-Drunk Love notwithstanding). Yet from the moment it opens on a militant ICE detention center crowded with detained refugees, this exhilarating epic breaks away from its source material to urgently shed light on what troubled times we’re living in now, as though acknowledging right away how much the world has changed since Vineland was published so long ago. In essence, One Battle After Another is really best described as a different beast altogether from Vineland, reworking Pynchon’s novel from the ground up into PTA’s most tautly thrilling work ever put to screen.

On a base level, both Vineland and One Battle After Another are the story of a father and daughter on the run from dangerous government forces. Whereas the book essentially starts right away with the sudden home invasion that forces them to flee, the movie begins by thrusting us back in time to the incendiary terrorist group whose shadow they cannot escape from: “the French 75.” Chief among this organized band of radicalized rebels are Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his lover Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), who both partake in raiding border camps and reducing targeted areas to rubble. Left to raise his only child on his own after Perfidia flees across the border to Mexico, Pat—who has changed his name to “Bob Ferguson”—tries to put his violent past behind him for the sake of giving his adolescent daughter Willa Ferguson (Chase Infiniti) a better life. All that is shattered when the French 75’s old nemesis, the malicious military officer Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), shows up at their doorstep to enact revenge.

While both One Battle After Another and Vineland loosely utilize this same premise as a jumping-off point, the structure and tone of these two works could not be any further apart. Pynchon’s novel was largely centered around tangential flashbacks as the young female protagonist uncovers the truth about her fraught family history, rather than focusing on the present-day chaos she and her father are caught in. In fact, her father is barely even present in the book at all, having little impact on the events that unfold. PTA’s adaptation turns that on its head by giving him a far more prominent role in the story, even when he doesn’t act as the main driving force for what happens within it. As such, Bob’s fatherly bond with his daughter in the wake of his wife’s permanent absence is placed front and center here, giving their relationship a stronger emotional core than in Pynchon’s novel. One Battle After Another is notably also more of a thriller than the book it’s inspired by, reveling in action to a much greater degree than Pynchon did.

Set in the 20th century, Vineland carries a distinct cultural context that additionally sets it apart from One Battle After Another. The novel jumped back and forth in time between the 1960s & 1980s to illustrate the post-Vietnam turbulence America was experiencing throughout that era. Conversely, One Battle After Another’s social commentary often seems more ripped from yesterday’s headlines, even though no exact year is specified. Much like Ari Aster’s controversial COVID Western Eddington, in fact, this is one of few recent mainstream releases willing to confront this country’s nightmarish hysteria so head-on. For a movie tackling such thorny topics throughout, One Battle After Another crucially remains a crowd-pleasing blockbuster first and foremost—one that’s as electrifying to simply soak in as it is enlightening to chew on afterwards.

Given just how drastically One Battle After Another sets itself apart from Pynchon’s novel, PTA’s accomplished storytelling skill is all the more impressive in a near 3-hour journey, one always propelled by its rapidly accelerating momentum. Whether drawn from Pynchon’s writing or PTA’s own mind, each central character has such a magnetic screen presence, even if it’s in how utterly repellent they are. Not since The Wolf of Wall Street has DiCaprio been so well-suited to flex his comedic acting chops within a powerhouse dramatic performance, yet Penn still manages to steal the show as the slimy, fascistic Lockjaw. Benicio Del Toro’s stellar supporting role is also a highlight, with his portrayal of the level-headed sidekick Sergio St. Carlos providing a suitable counterbalance to DiCaprio’s paranoia. Even for a film that remains so frantic and fast-paced, it takes real time to flesh them all out while never losing grip of this enthralling energy.

Bolstered by the largest budget of PTA’s career, One Battle After Another stylistically harkens back to classic 1970s genre fare, yet enough of his signature directorial personality shines through to give it a very unique voice. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist as one of the first films shot in the format “VistaVision” since the 1960s, it drips with grimy texture that is just gorgeous to absorb. This sense of visual splendor extends to how stunningly all the grandest setpieces are choreographed, in particular a climactic car chase where the camera moves in sync with a winding road’s hills and humps. Jonny Greenwood’s superbly restless score, often laced with minimalist piano amidst its momentous orchestration, proves once again that he is PTA’s finest musical collaborator beyond any reasonable doubt. Without this meticulous filmmaking majesty present throughout all his best work, every possible technical element polished to perfection, One Battle After Another would not feel nearly as special.

Surely PTA’s greatest cinematic achievement of the decade thus far, One Battle After Another is a staggering familial saga unlike anything he’s created before. Though not exactly faithful to Pynchon’s original text by a long shot, it doesn’t need to be when carving out such a phenomenal vision in its own right. Rarely has any other literary adaptation felt quite so fresh while still being cut from similar thematic cloth, a delicate balance confidently maintained with the utmost grace. Whether judged against Vineland or not, it’s difficult to describe One Battle After Another as anything but Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest modern masterpiece, a new career-best triumph from one of the finest singular filmmakers still working today.