One Battle After Another | 2025

The settings and period for Paul Thomas Anderson's timely fable, loosely based on Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland, are left vague but it was filmed in many locations around California and in El Paso, Texas.

The extended prologue opens with a revolutionary group called the "French 75" attempting to free detainees from a detention centre near the US-Mexican border. This is the only really specific location – it's the real Otay Mesa Detention Center in the San Isidro Mountain foothills near San Diego, California.

It becomes quickly obvious that fierce activist 'Perfidia Beverly Hills' (Teyana Taylor) and explosives expert 'Ghetto' Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) are as enraptured by each other as they are by the revolution.

The French 75's main campaign though is robbing or simply blowing up banks...

...such as the 'Westward Bank" which was an empty property at 561 J Street at 6th Street, in the heart of Sacramento, California and, as you can see, it's still standing.

The story takes a wild turn when Perfidia is discovered by Officer Steve Lockjaw (Sean Penn) planting explosives but, instead of being taken into custody, the smitten officer offers an "arrangement" – as a result of which Perfidia becomes pregnant by him.

After Perfidia shoots dead a guard during a robbery, her actions can no longer be ignore. The deadly raid is on a real bank this time – the Bank of Stockton, 311 East Main Street at San Joaquin Street in Downtown Stockton, California.

Oddly, the ensuing car chase is through Sacramento, crossing Sacramento's Tower Bridge, though you'd never guess since we never see the towers that give the bridge its name.

After being taken into custody, Perfidia cuts a deal, naming names of her group in return for being given a new identity under the witness protection scheme.

There follows a ruthless round-up of the French 75. Disguised with a black wig, 'Mae West' (Alana Haim) is browsing in a supermarket when she realises she's been recognised. A hasty exit via the rear door can't save her as she's instantly shot dead. The store is Elliott’s Natural Foods, 3347 El Camino Avenue at Yorktown Avenue, northeast Sacramento.

The successful takedown of most of French 75 sees Lockjaw presented with the Bedford Forrest Medal of Honor at a ceremony filmed inside Sacramento County Superior Court House, Sacramento (I couldn't resist Googling that name – and discovered that Bedford Forrest was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan).

The set-up of the main story complete, we move forward 16 years to find 'Ghetto' and Perfidia's daughter have fled to the fictitious 'Baktan Cross', a Sanctuary City in California, living under the new IDs of Bob Ferguson and his daughter Willa (now played by Chase Infiniti).

Their home is tucked discreetly away in wooded land in the rural community of Kneeland, inland from Eureka in Humboldt County, Northern California. Feeling they're untraceable, they've become a little complacent but the past is about to catch up with them

Mysteriously summoned to a large hotel, where a swanky wedding celebration is in progress, Lockjaw is smuggled in the rear entrance for a secret meeting. The medal has paid off, and he's invited to become a member of the exclusive white-supremacist group the Christmas Adventurer's Club. We've suddenly moved to Southern California. his is San Diego, and the hotel is the Westgate Hotel, 1055 Second Avenue.

Realising that the existence of a mixed-race child would compromise his whiter-than-white credentials, Lockjaw sets out on his own mission to track her down.

He gets a break when French 75 operative Billygoat, who runs his own radio network, is picked up at his home on Mundy Drive, El Paso, and after threats gives up the whereabouts of Bob and Willa.

Local kids, trained for such an event, are quick to take over the communications network and manage to get out the message "Billygoat is in the wind."

Lockjaw's men head up to 'Baktan Cross' to raid the high school where Willa is likely to be found at the school dance. Having been warned, operative Deandra (Regina Hall) manages to spirit Willa away just as the soldiers arrive. 'Baktan Cross High' is Eureka High School, 1915 J Street, Eureka, California.

Bob is also alerted, by phone, just in time to exit through a tunnel beneath his home, emerging in a forest among a bunch of abandoned car wrecks. Still in Eureka, the woods are Sequoia Park, as we see when, in his Dude-style dressing gown, he runs past picnic tables exiting from the park gates at W Street just north of Madrone Avenue.

Making his way through a supermarket, and helping himself to a pair of shades, he calls back his contact from a street phone. The store is Murphy's Market, 4020 Walnut Drive in Cutten, in southeast Eureka – and that phone was added just for the film.

The years of dope and booze have dulled Bob's edge so that he's unable to answer the cryptic French 75 security question "What time is it?". Now unable to be told the coordinates of the rendezvous point, Bob turns to a friend for help.

Suddenly he's a few miles north, in Arcata, running along the raised freeway which runs south to become G Street, overlooking a fast food joint we assume is 'Chicken Licken' which we've been told is being raided. Actually, this is Raliberto’s Taco Shop, 1811 G Street, Arcata.

Bob is heading to the "Sergio St Carlos Ninja Academy", but it's one helluva long run.

The 'dojo' of Willa's karate teacher Sensei Sergio St Carlos’ (Benicio Del Toro) was a vacant store, 604 South Stanton Street at East 4th Avenue in Downtown El Paso, Texas. We stay in El Paso for a while.

Following raids in 'Baktan Cross', demonstrations have broken out and, as Sergio drives Bob to his apartment, a gaggle of street skaters at the intersection of East San Antonio Avenue and Oregon Street warn them it's "World War Three out there, bro!".

Sergio's apartment where there's "a little Latino Harriet Tubman situation going on" – a reference to Tubman's legendary 'underground' railway to evacuate freed slaves – is above Perfumeria Genesis, 310 South El Paso Street, El Paso.

While Lockjaw and his men are impeded by rioting crowds on South Stanton Street, between Overland Avenue and East Paisano Drive a couple of blocks north of the 'dojo', Bob eventually persuades the organisation to give him details of the rendezvous point. He escapes over the rooftops only to be tasered as soon as he gets to the ground and taken in.

The rendezvous point is the compound of the 'Sisters of the Brave Beaver', an order of radical nuns supposedly in the 'Chupacabra Hills' to which Willa has by now been delivered by Deandra.

This is La Purísima Mission State Historic Park, 2295 Purísima Road in Lompoc, California. Willa's phone inadvertently tips off Lockjaw who's soon on the scene, carrying out a DNA test which confirms what he already suspected. Willa is his biological daughter.

Established in 1787, it's now part of the State Historic Park, and the only example of a complete mission complex in California, with ten of its original buildings fully restored, including the church itself, shops, quarters, and blacksmith shop.

Lockjaw has good reason to be worried. By now the Christmas Adventurers Club too has heard tell of his unacknowledged child. At yet another secret meeting, a member called Tim is given the chillingly unambiguous order to clean things up.

It turns out the Club's HQ is beneath the 1925 Tudor-revival mansion at 1341 45th Street at M Street in East Sacramento. This is famous as being home to Ronald and Nancy Reagan while he was the Governor of California. It's a private home, but has been officially designated as a landmark.

Amazingly, the secret door in the mural and the underground corridor are the real deal. A set had been planned but the mansion provided this unexpected treasure.

Lockjaw delivers Willa to bounty hunter Avanti to dispose of her permanently. The spectacular sandstone cliffs beneath which Lockjaw meets up with Avanti is Shell Reef, northeast of Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area, 5172 Highway 78, Borrego Springs, California.

Refusing to kill a child, Avanti agrees to take Willa to a group called '1776', who it seems will be happy to carry out the task. Their waterside compound is Walter’s Camp, 2556 Walters Camp Road, south of Palo Verde, near the Arizona border.

In reality, it's a harmless enough riverfront campground on the Lower Colorado River with a boat launch, camping, RV hookups and sites accommodating 200 people.

The resistance still has operatives everywhere and Bob is quickly sprung from captivity to find Sergio waiting in the car.

Bob, now on his own, gets info in broken Spanish from the guys at a juice stall, which was Fruit Stand Sea View at the northeast corner of Di Giorgio Road and Henderson Canyon Road, north of Borrego Springs. Incredibly welcome in the desert I'd have thought, but it looks to be now permanently closed.

The film's climax brings the main characters together, chasing each other along a stretch of desert road – but this road is several locations knitted together.

That stomach-churningly undulating stretch of road is fittingly called River of Hills and it's on Ben Hulse Highway (part of California Route 78) in Buzzards Peak Wilderness, south of Palo Verde in Imperial County, California. And if you want to visit, remember the restricted view of the road ahead really does makes it genuinely hazardous.

The road was a pretty much last minute discovery for the film crew and very neatly blends in with another road which has a similar blind dip, which is what Willa exploits to get rid of Tim. Known as the Texas Dip, it's still in California, on Borrego Springs Road, off Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Road.

As you can see, the Dip is immediately next to the 'Welcome to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park' sign, which is what Willa hides behind and where she's reunited with Bob.

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