Cool Cars in ‘One Battle After Another’ (2025)

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Paul Thomas Anderson’s new movie ‘One Battle After Another‘ is an instant classic. A frantic, thrilling action movie that has quickly become a defining depiction of our time. The star-studded cast has received critical acclaim, with Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, and Benicio Del Toro being recognized as delivering some of the best performances of their illustrious careers. It is the highest grossing film of director Anderson’s career, and is expected to give the much-celebrated director his first Oscar victory. More important than all that stuff, it’s a great car movie!

Early in the film, a group of revolutionary guerilla fighters called the French 75, flee a bank heist gone wrong. They speed through the streets in vehicles befitting a group of young urban radicals; the unglamorous 1989 Ford Taurus sedan and 2005 Chevy Uplander minivan. Short on money and needing to blend in, the cars they choose are closer to the non-descript Chevy Malibu in ‘Drive‘ than the flashy Hollywood rides of ‘Fast and Furious‘. Unfortunately, the downside to fleeing the cops with cheap commuter cars is that they lack both speed and agility, and the chase ends with both cars being destroyed.

Years later, the members of the French 75 have all been arrested, killed, or gone into hiding. When the film’s antagonist Col. Lockjaw (Penn) finds out that French 75 member Bob Ferguson (DiCaprio) is living under the radar in a small sanctuary town, he sends in the death-squad to locate and eliminate Ferguson. At the same time, Lockjaw is trying to hunt down Ferguson’s daughter Willa, whom Lockjaw believes he may be the father of, after a bizarre love triangle earlier in the film.

As this sordid story unfolds, Col. Lockjaw himself becomes the subject of a manhunt by members of group of white supremacists called the Christmas Adventurers Club, a secret society that Col. Lockjaw was trying to join. However, the possibility that Col. Lockjaw fathered a half-black child would bring the bringing the Christmas Adventurers Club into disrepute. Lockjaw’s would-be assassin gets orders to eliminate their new pledge when he shows up at the secret HQ in a beautiful 1968 Shelby GT 500. Yes! The same car that Steve McQueen drove in ‘Bullitt‘! The evil Richie Rich secret society member can afford the top-model Mustang, while poor old Lt. Bullitt had to settle for a standard Ford Mustang Fastback on a police detective’s salary.

In fear for his life, Ferguson flees the city with Sensei (Del Toro) in a red 1990 Ford Thunderbird Super Coupe, easily identified by the automatic seatbelts that Ferguson gets tangled in. But when the cops start chasing the duo, Ferguson has to jump out the window of the moving car and find a new set of wheels. Ferguson uses his special training to hot-wires the coolest car of the movie; a Midnight Purple, 1991 Nissan Sentra SE-R two-door coupe. It’s got all the boy-racer components of the era like the big spoiler, loud exhaust and custom racing wheel. The four-cylinders pocket-rocket takes him buzzing through the hills and drifting through the country roads in search of his daughter.

The film culminates with the action-movie trope; the big car chase through the desert hills. The assassin from the Christmas Adventurers Club has ditched his blue 1968 Mustang GT500 for a 2013 Mustang GT500. His prey is Willa, the young daughter of Bob Ferguson (or is it Col. Lockjaw?) who has stolen a white 2023 Dodge Charger Pursuit with the ‘Police Package’. It doesn’t take a gearhead to know that this chase mirrors the pursuit chase from ‘Bullitt‘ with a Mustang chasing a Charger through rolling hills. This time, with vehicles models from 50 years later, gone are the high center-of-gravity, screeching bias-ply tires, and out-of-control skidding into a fueling station from McQueen’s film. These modern muscle cars are low and fast, speeding across a roller-coaster landscape at top speed. In ‘Bullitt‘ the Mustang belonged to the good guy, the Charger the bad guy, but in the satire ‘One Battle After Another‘ the roles are reversed. Even the iconic and twisty city streets of San Francisco are traded for the rolling hills of rural California.

All the while, the little purple Nissan buzzes along in the background, desperately trying to catch the V8 powered machines up the road. The Nissan Sentra SE-R was the ‘sports’ model in the lineup back in 1992, but the biggest engine sold in the Sentra pumped out just 145 HP, a far cry from the Mustang’s factory-rated 662 HP produced by its supercharged V8. To be frank, even the Dodge Charger is outmatched by the Mustang, producing half the HP of the pony car. This forces young Willa to resort to some unorthodox tactics to evade her pursuant.

In the three weeks since the theatrical release, there has been much debate about whether ‘One Battle After Another‘ is the best movie of 2025. But there is no doubt that Anderson would win the Oscar for Best Car Chase of 2025 if the stiffs at the Academy of Motion Pictures had such a prize. Some are calling the hunt in the hills between the Ford Mustang, the Dodge Charger, and the Nissan Sentra SE-R as the best car chase scene since ‘Bullitt‘ and we’d tend to agree. The close-ups of the pursuing car in the rearview mirror give the feeling of an animal stalking its prey, and the camera rising and falling over the waves of hills is pure ‘Jaws‘. Gosh, action movies really don’t get the respect they deserve!

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