Sean Penn’s Role in One Battle After Another Has Viewers Wondering If the Film Targets Real Figures

Sean Penn’s character Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2025 film “One Battle After Another” has sparked considerable speculation about whether the role deliberately targets real-world figures, particularly Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol commander relieved of duties following immigration enforcement controversies.

However, the answer is more complicated than it first appears: while viewers have drawn undeniable parallels between the fictional colonel and Bovino, the character is actually adapted from Brock Vond, a villain in Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland”—suggesting the resemblance may be coincidental rather than intentional.

Yet the timing, combined with the film’s sharp critique of U.S.

immigration policy, has made that distinction feel less reassuring to audiences asking whether Anderson was making a pointed statement about contemporary enforcement tactics.

This article examines the evidence, the literary source, the real-world comparisons viewers are making, and why the question itself reveals how contemporary cinema intertwines fiction and politics in ways that defy easy categorization.

The question of whether “One Battle After Another” targets real figures cuts to a larger debate about art’s relationship to politics and power. Some viewers see a film deliberately taking aim at individuals like Bovino; others see Anderson adapting pre-existing literary material that happens to resonate with current events.

Both interpretations deserve examination, as does the conservative backlash claiming the film functions as an “ill-timed apologia for left-wing violence.” Understanding what the film actually does—and does not—do requires separating source material from production choices, and literary precedent from contemporary timing.

Table of Contents

• Who Is Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, and Why Do Viewers See Gregory Bovino?
• The Literary Source Material and Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland”
• Why the Parallels Feel Intentional Despite Literary Origins
• Sean Penn’s Oscar Win and the Third-Act Revelation
• The Political Controversy and Competing Interpretations
• The 1981 Weather Underground Connection and Historical Echo
• What the Film Actually Criticizes and the Ambiguity That Remains
• Conclusion

Who Is Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, and Why Do Viewers See Gregory Bovino?

Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw is the primary antagonist of “One battle after Another,” a hardline military zealot who oversees an immigration detention center with ruthless authority.

Penn’s performance, which earned him his third Oscar at the 2026 Academy Awards on March 16, portrays a man whose ideological commitment to enforcement overrides all humanitarian concern.

The character’s role in the film centers on immigration detention operations, making him a figurehead for a particular vision of border enforcement—one marked by zealotry rather than bureaucratic restraint.

Penn’s portrayal includes a notable third-act transformation involving makeup work that further distances the character from any immediately recognizable figure, yet viewers have increasingly identified the colonel with Gregory Bovino, a real Border Patrol commander who led aggressive immigration raids before being relieved of duties by President Trump.

The Bovino connection is specific and contextual. Bovino headed immigration enforcement operations that became controversial, particularly following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretty in Minnesota—an incident that drew national attention and contributed to his removal from his position.

For viewers watching a 2025 film about a military figure orchestrating detention center operations, the parallels felt immediate: a real enforcement official, real detention controversies, real deaths resulting from immigration enforcement, and a fictional villain embodying a particular ideology of enforcement power.

However, this parallel exists partly because both the fictional and real figures occupy similar structural roles in a system—a detention authority figure—rather than because Anderson was necessarily making a specific portrait of Bovino.

The Literary Source Material and Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland”

The critical context for understanding Lockjaw’s origins lies not in 2025’s political moment but in 1990, when Thomas Pynchon published “Vineland,” a sprawling novel containing the character Brock Vond—a hardline antagonist who shares Colonel Lockjaw’s ideological rigidity and authoritarian approach.

Anderson based his film on Pynchon’s novel, adapting Brock Vond’s character into the colonel, which means the archetype of the zealous enforcement official predates Gregory Bovino’s prominence by decades.

This presents a crucial caveat: the resemblance between Lockjaw and Bovino likely results from both characters occupying similar positions in power structures (enforcement, detention, ideological rigidity) rather than from Anderson deliberately crafting a character portrait of Bovino specifically. The character existed in literary form long before the production timeline that led to the 2025 film.

However, the gap between literary adaptation and contemporary resonance matters. Even if Anderson adapted Pynchon’s character without Bovino in mind, the decision to produce the film in 2025—when Bovino’s enforcement activities and subsequent fall from power were recent and politically charged—created an unavoidable collision between literary source and current events.

A film released in 2025 about a detention center overseer necessarily arrives in conversation with 2025’s detention center realities. Viewers watching a character based on 1990 fiction still encountered a 2025 statement about immigration enforcement, regardless of Anderson’s original intent.

This gap between source material timing and release timing is where the “targets real figures” question genuinely becomes ambiguous.

Why the Parallels Feel Intentional Despite Literary Origins

Viewers have also drawn connections between Colonel Lockjaw and broader historical moments of enforcement violence, including the 1981 Weather Underground incident that killed two officers, including Waverly Brown, the first Black law enforcement officer in Nyack, New York.

These layered historical references—the novel’s 1990 character, the contemporary Bovino incident, the historical Weather Underground case—have accumulated in viewer interpretation to create a sense that the film is making deliberate statements about enforcement culture and its costs. The film’s critical reception included BAFTA nominations and widespread acclaim for its willingness to interrogate U.S.

immigration policy directly, which strengthened viewer perception that the work was making a political argument, not simply adapting literary material.

This perception intensified because the film’s supporting ensemble—including Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio del Toro, and others—carries the story toward political confrontation. The film is not incidental about its subject matter; it centers immigration enforcement as a moral question.

For viewers, this thematic clarity combines with the character’s resemblance to real enforcement officials to create an impression of intentional targeting.

Even if Anderson adapted Pynchon’s character without thinking of Bovino, the choice to make detention center operations the film’s central moral conflict practically guarantees that viewers would read it through the lens of contemporary detention center realities.

Sean Penn’s Oscar Win and the Third-Act Revelation

Sean Penn’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar—his third win and a significant recognition for a career spanning decades—elevated the character from supporting antagonist to one of the film’s focal points.

The Academy’s recognition of the performance emphasized Penn’s commitment to the role and the character’s centrality to the film’s thematic concerns. The third-act reveal involving notable makeup work transformed Penn’s appearance, signaling a dramatic shift in the character’s status or psychological state.

This transformation likely functions as the film’s climactic statement about the character’s ideology and its consequences—a visual punctuation on the moral trajectory that drives the narrative.

The makeup work and third-act transformation matter because they suggest the character arc itself is the point, not the character’s resemblance to any particular real figure.

If Anderson were creating a portrait of Gregory Bovino, the character would need to remain recognizable; instead, the third-act transformation signals that Lockjaw’s specificity as a real person is less important than his function as an ideological representation.

Penn’s Oscar-winning performance thus reinforces an interpretation where the character embodies a type—the enforcement zealot, the ideologue of detention—rather than a specific individual. The recognition the Academy gave this performance underscores the character’s archetypal power.

The Political Controversy and Competing Interpretations

“One Battle After Another” arrived in theaters amid intense political polarization regarding immigration enforcement and left-wing activism. Conservative critics, including figures like David Marcus at Fox News and writers in the National Review, argued that the film functions as an “ill-timed apologia for left-wing violence” and could inspire violence by portraying armed resistance movements sympathetically.

This criticism interprets the film as deliberately positioned to justify activist violence, making Gregory Bovino or any detention center official a stand-in for a broader critique of enforcement culture and conservative political positions.

Defenders of the film dispute these interpretations, arguing that the work does not glorify left-wing violence but rather interrogates the violence inherent in immigration enforcement systems themselves.

The disagreement reflects a fundamental divide in how viewers approach films about power and resistance: some read sympathetic treatment of resistance as endorsement of violence; others read it as acknowledgment of real grievances.

This divide explains why viewers draw parallels to real figures like Bovino—they are reading the film as a political argument about actual systems, actual people, and actual consequences. Whether that reading aligns with Anderson’s intent or Pynchon’s source material becomes secondary to the film’s function in contemporary discourse.

The 1981 Weather Underground Connection and Historical Echo

Some viewers have connected Colonel Lockjaw and the film’s treatment of enforcement operations to the 1981 Weather Underground incident, where two law enforcement officers were killed, including Waverly Brown, the first Black law enforcement officer in Nyack, New York.

This historical parallel adds another layer to the film’s exploration of the costs of enforcement ideology and the violence that erupts at the intersection of power, ideology, and resistance.

The film’s engagement with this historical moment—whether explicit or implicit—suggests that Anderson may be invoking a longer history of enforcement violence, not simply responding to contemporary cases like Bovino’s.

This historical depth complicates any straightforward reading of the film as targeting specific real figures. Instead, it positions Colonel Lockjaw within a genealogy of enforcement zealots stretching back decades, suggesting that the character type—not the individual portrait—is what matters.

The 1981 reference positions contemporary detention enforcement within a historical continuum, implying that the systems and ideologies Penn’s character embodies have deep roots and broad implications beyond any single official’s career.

What the Film Actually Criticizes and the Ambiguity That Remains

“One Battle After Another” fundamentally criticizes U.S. immigration policy and the enforcement apparatus surrounding detention. The film’s willingness to center this critique, combined with its ensemble cast and political ambition, makes it an explicitly political work.

However, criticism of a system is not the same as targeting an individual, and the film can critique detention enforcement without specifically portraying Gregory Bovino or any other named official. This distinction matters for understanding what the film does: it creates a character embodying a particular enforcement ideology and explores that ideology’s consequences.

The ambiguity that persists—whether the film deliberately targets real figures or simply resonates with real situations—reflects a broader challenge of contemporary political cinema. Viewers will inevitably read films about power through the lens of their own political moment and their awareness of real crises.

That Gregory Bovino is a real person who held a real position and made real decisions affecting real people means that any fictional detention center overseer will invite comparison. The question is not whether viewers will make those comparisons—they will—but whether making those comparisons requires that Anderson deliberately intended them.

The evidence suggests intentionality lies somewhere between source material adaptation and contemporary resonance, neither fully accidental nor fully deliberate.

Conclusion

Sean Penn’s Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw appears to target real figures in contemporary detention enforcement, particularly Gregory Bovino, but the character is actually adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland,” where a similar zealous antagonist already existed.

This gap between literary source and contemporary resonance creates genuine ambiguity: the film may target Bovino-like figures without targeting Bovino specifically, or it may simply adapt pre-existing literary material that happens to resonate powerfully with 2025’s immigration enforcement realities. What remains clear is that “One Battle After Another” functions as a political film interrogating U.S.

immigration policy, and viewers will necessarily read its characters through the lens of real enforcement controversies and real deaths resulting from detention system operations.

The film’s critical success and Sean Penn’s Oscar recognition suggest that audiences and institutions recognized something significant in the work—whether that recognition stems from Anderson’s deliberate political argument or from the film’s ability to resonate with contemporary crises remains, productively, open to interpretation.

What is not ambiguous is that the question itself—whether fiction targets real figures—matters to how we understand cinema’s relationship to politics, power, and the systems we inhabit. “One Battle After Another” invites that question precisely by adapting literary material into a contemporary moment where detention enforcement remains urgent and contested.

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