Leonardo DiCaprio received his seventh acting Oscar nomination for portraying "Ghetto" Pat Calhoun aka "Rocketman" eventually known as Bob Ferguson in One Battle After Another.
One Battle After Another follows a former revolutionary trying to protect his daughter.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays technically the lead of the film however it is not your usual lead in the way that his character exists within the narrative. As we initially more strongly follow Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) where DiCaprio “Ghetto” Pat is essentially a newer member to the revolutionary group the French 75, offering explosives for the group. DiCaprio's performance in the initial scene however is actually quite important and interesting as we see a certain timidity at first as he offers what he can do with a slight hint of fearing potential rejection. They take on what he can do and he helps them in a successful operation where what DiCaprio portrays, along with Taylor, is the adrenaline rush of the act. Where DiCaprio rages his passion about the revolution before raging just as passionately that he loves black women himself as Perfidia begins to passionately make out with her. Although honestly Taylor dominates the lust essentially and it is a fascinating alternative where DiCaprio shows the surprise but also the joy of being “taken” by her intensity. Where we briefly see their passions together for each other and the revolution, where DiCaprio’s performance just accentuates the idea of being swept along with it all. Unfortunately we see just as naturally the decay where basically the high of their initial discovery of sex and the revolution wears off. DiCaprio’s great in showing the strange state of maturation where in his eyes and reactions you see the timidity to say what he needs to say to his wife, even after she becomes pregnant, DiCaprio’s performance accentuates more so now a calmer concern with life.
Although I do need to mention just a brief detour in this section of DiCaprio’s performance isn’t comedic yet except his one scene with Sean Penn as Col. Stephen J. Lockjaw who is also having sex with Perfidia, where Lockjaw randomly talks to Pat at a grocery store where he proclaims his love of “black girls” to him, and DiCaprio gets all the credit in the world for his pitch perfect “WTF” reaction to him during, for him, a totally random encounter. Back to the main though is Perfidia continuing to be fall on revolutionary even after their daughter is born, and in their big fight, you see the two sides where DiCaprio’s performance accentuates a desire now for normalcy where there is the come down from the revolution and the desire just to raise his child. DiCaprio doesn’t suggest that Pat was lying previously but does show someone who was swept up who is no longer swept up, now just wants to live a life. An idea Perfidia doesn’t accept leading to her arrest and the destruction of much of the French 75, where Pat and his daughter Charlene are sent into hiding, with the new names of Bob and Willa Ferguson. Meanwhile Perfidia disappears altogether, leaving Bob and Willa to live normal lives on their own.
We have a time jump and with that we have a massive performance jump from former ardent revolutionary to caring father to now…burnout. And honestly the whole swing of DiCaprio’s performance is a magnificent one as he becomes nearly fully comic, though a very specific note that he manages to excel with here in portraying this as the result of years of drugs and paranoia where we now have Bob as he is called in such a different state. Something we see right away at a parent teacher conference where DiCaprio’s work is already amazing where his dazed look of only half listening to the teacher, where he then needs to randomly speak his bona fides as a revolutionary, although delivered in the most messy of ways, as Bob needs to note the “right history” and Ben Franklin was a slave holder. DiCaprio’s great because he shows that Bob does believe in that passion in some truly messy way that he has no grasp of whatsoever, but the more overriding quality is that dazed look where he seems barely awake as the teacher is trying to tell him about his daughter. We find Bob’s more common experience in his morning conversation with Willa, now played by Chase Infiniti, where she grills him a bit on what he was doing the previous night. DiCaprio’s delivery is wonderful in the meek attempt to try to put a bit of dad bluster in defending himself so half-heartedly, yet is more convincing as the child trying to explain away his bad behavior of drinking and driving as anything but.
DiCaprio finds the artistry of playing the burnout as manages to be very funny while also believably playing into the state of this man who is always at least half high/half drunk and fully paranoid at only having memories of his old life while attempting to be a dad sorta. An excellent moment for DiCaprio to run with as Willa’s friends come over to pick her up for a dance and DiCaprio gives us a masterclass in how to be as unhip as possible. From his immediate overblown reaction to them pulling up, with one of my favorite line deliveries of 2025 “and they just have a red car like that, driving a little loud don’t yah think?” which DiCaprio manages to make speak to Bob’s constant state of concern and paranoia, while also just being hilarious as a dad wholly out of step with everything. Followed by just as wonderfully his asking for clarification on the gender state of one of her friends, because DiCaprio again manages to be so perfectly painfully awkward even as Bob theoretically is trying to connect. Of course less connective is talking to one of her friends where DiCaprio is comic gold where we see the pure classic dad come out as he threatens the friend if he’s to violate his daughter at all, where DiCaprio’s strong arming is such a bit of great ridiculousness amplified only by his repeated stumbling use of the word “Homie” one too many times.
Unfortunately for Bob and Willa, Stephen J. Lockjaw in the hope of becoming a Christmas Adventurer needs to erase all evidence of his relationship with Perfidia, which sadly may include Willa herself, and leads to Stephen using a crackdown on Bob and Willa’s hometown in order to find Willa. Where Bob gets a warning call from the remnants of the French 75, and DiCaprio’s reaction to the call is outstanding because he’s basically waking up twice, once literally, second to basically his past in a way where you just see the memories going through his eyes as he’s trying to recall the old passwords before setting off to find a rendezvous point with Willa and the French 75, unfortunately for Bob Lockjaw is at his front door leading to a sudden escape. Where we go from struggling dad to now man on the run, though Bob is hardly Richard Kimble when it comes to being a fugitive. Rather what DiCaprio runs with is the physicality of the already paranoid man on the run, where every movement is a turn to look for something to get him, which to be fair is true, yet amplified to an extreme, before we get Bob’s first phone call to the revolutionary hotline. DiCaprio illustrates the struggle of Bob with such magnificent detail as even he gets the first couple right you see how he’s pulling it deeply in drug rattled memory banks, until he gets stuck and I love his delivery as purely like someone on a customer service line just trying to get past the red tape rather than any sort of responses to a secret organization.
Luckily for Bob he finds the best person to discover in a crisis Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro) who is Willa’s karate Sensei. Where we then get basically such a great duo act between del Toro’s calm and DiCaprio being anything other than calm. Del Toro’s movements of knowing exactly what to do make for perfect contrast against DiCaprio being all over the place, always slightly scared, and being completely lost in every scene as he is constantly looking in every direction and is moving in anywhere other than a straight line. Sensei thankfully is able to hide Bob away and give him a chance to make another phone call to the revolution organization, where DiCaprio again delivers a masterclass on the frustrations of customer service. I love his expressions as you just feel the volcanic level of annoyance every time the speaker keeps insisting on the “what’s the time” password, but DiCaprio naturally weaves in the actual palatable sense of distress of not being able to find his daughter in certain moments where he’s on the near breakdown as he fails to come up with the name. DiCaprio marvelously does a natural switch up though when essentially he asks to speak with the “manager” who happens to be one of his old comrades and he finally gets the rendezvous point. DiCaprio brings the right type of bluster as Bob is filled with a bit of confidence from the minor victory and even getting to chew out Comrade Josh who had been the unhelpful revolutionary service representative.
I love the beat we get as Sensei sends him off with a mission and his own rifle to escape, where we get a quick bit of Pat Calhoun as DiCaprio brings out his old revolutionary spirit to give a bit “viva the revolution” praise. Unfortunately Bob’s newfound confidence is premature as he almost instantly falls off a building and is tased and arrested by the local police. The comedown unfortunately is quite severe as Bob pronounces himself as “Batman” in the most sorrowful delivery of a man completely lost again while being arrested. Thankfully for him Sensei’s influence stretches him far enough to get released from prison and Sensei goes about delivering Bob himself to the rendezvous point. Here’s where we get perhaps DiCaprio’s greatest scene where we get Bob probably closest to his sober self as DiCaprio brings such a subtle quiet contemplative emotion as he thinks about the failures of his relationship with Perfidia as well as his less than perfect state with Willa. DiCaprio’s delivery of “I can’t do her hair right” is just so heartbreakingly delivered by DiCaprio. As he conveys so deeply his own feelings of failures as a dad yet within that moment he also conveys really how deeply he truly cares about Willa despite all his flaws. A moment that speaks to the strength of DiCaprio’s work because there is no clash with the comedy of his pratfalls rather it all feels different aspects of the same man.
The finale of the film is an interesting anti-action hero situation for DiCaprio because while he technically is the “hero” of the piece as he goes about running to save Willa, what we see him do is always being a few steps behind. DiCaprio though is terrific in being the less than ideal hero, as his moment of trading shots with the army, then trying to track down an escaping Lockjaw, who has Willa, DiCaprio’s performance punctuates the less than ideal warrior Bob is well conveying consistently his emotional need to desperately find the daughter he loves. He manages to convey though some semblance of courage now in Bob and not quite as paranoid, even if not exactly a precise operator. As Bob doesn’t exactly save the day, Willa ends up escaping and stopping a man from killing her, but Bob does what is maybe most necessary, which is to be there. Where DiCaprio makes the most of the reconciliation scene where he manages to speak of all the fears and screwups in his emotional exhaustion, yet within it there is the palatable need to find his daughter and just see her again. It’s a moving scene where DiCaprio finds the fundamental truths of Bob that no matter all his flaws, he does love his daughter and will be there for her. In the final scene of the film, DiCaprio’s great actually in the simplicity of the choice, which is just emphasizing that Bob is a bit more put together not wholly, but more so his reactions to Willa are with calm, support and understanding. He’s not putting a lot on it, and it is the perfect choice to make a deeply moving final moment to both their relationship and the film. After not being impressed by his last two performances, this is a full return to form for DiCaprio. This is a great performance from DiCaprio, one that makes great use of his comedic sensibilities but with a strong sense of tone. Where DiCaprio manages to create a funny portrait of a burned out former revolutionary, but with his as essential genuinely moving undercurrent of the depiction of the struggle just to be a dad.
