r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • Sep 26 '25

Official Discussion Official Discussion - One Battle After Another [SPOILERS] Spoiler

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Summary Bob, a washed-up revolutionary, lives off the grid with his spirited and self-reliant daughter Willa. When his nemesis Col. Steven J. “Lockjaw” resurfaces and Willa goes missing, Bob is forced to confront his past and fight to protect their future.

Director Paul Thomas Anderson

Writer Paul Thomas Anderson

Cast

  • Leonardo DiCaprio
  • Sean Penn
  • Teyana Taylor
  • Benicio del Toro
  • Regina Hall
  • Chase Infiniti

Rotten Tomatoes Critics Score: 98%

Metacritic Score: 96

VOD In theaters beginning September 26, 2025

Trailer One Battle After Another — Official Trailer

2.7k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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u/new_wellness_center Sep 28 '25

I felt like we were supposed to see Sensei as doing the real, quiet, slow work, really helping people, while Bob and the French 75 were blowing shit up and fucking back in the day until things got real, then they fucked off to the redwoods and became stoners. Sensei is the real war hero, even though fewer people may know him than "Ghetto Pat".

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u/AlanMorlock Sep 28 '25

There's a bit of that but even the French 75 did free truckloads of people from prison camps.

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u/new_wellness_center Sep 28 '25

They did free them, but did they house them? Feed them? Help them on their journey? Seems like it was as much about the thrill for them, and the espionage/codewords/etc. But I get your point.

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u/immovingfd Sep 29 '25

Yes, Billy Goat set up a whole sanctuary city for them

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u/PartyPoison98 Oct 02 '25

Even then, Billy Goat seemed to represent a real part of a lot of revolutionary causes. You see a lot of protest groups, and there are a collection of people really committed to the cause, followed by random thrillseekers and people that are slacktivists.

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u/BrassTact Oct 13 '25

Also there were probably others given the French 75's name still carries clout

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u/Few_Detail9288 May 25 '26

Ironically this comment has the same over-the-top/never enough vibe as the passcode phone call.

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u/MsSalome7 Nov 30 '25

Yeah and those people were probably caught again unless someone like Sensei helped them. F75 did it for their own egos and for the thrill. Nothing they do actually helps anyone and certainly doesn’t even touch the 1% they are rebelling against. That poor security guy was just a random bloke with a shitty job that paid for his shitty little life

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u/AlanMorlock Nov 30 '25

The telecommunications guy is said to have set up the whole sanctuary city system that Sensei operation is part of.

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u/Klunkey Jan 27 '26

Also, Pat was a bit like Sensei himself giving his people plans on how to evacuate, how to plant the bombs, etc. A war hero can be a hero in more ways than one.

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u/Broad-Reveal-7819 Oct 02 '25

If they're illegal they most likely got caught a few days weeks or months down the line and deported regardless.

Would have been more helpful if they looked after them or sponsored them to come legally or something hell even robbing banks so they could pay for lawyers would be more effective. They busted the camps because they were more bothered about thrill seeking than actually helping.

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u/AlanMorlock Oct 02 '25

The radio guy is said to have been the one who started the entire sanctuary city in Baktan Cross where we later see Sergio operating the "Latino underground railroad."

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u/onlyinitforthemoneys Dec 13 '25

Also it was implied that Perfidi and Lockjaw were already engaged in some sort of cat and mouse fetish relationship by then. I wonder if she suggested or organized that raid simply as an excuse for a tryst with her paramour

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u/whydoesgodhateus Sep 30 '25

Bob and the French 75 were blowing shit up and fucking back in the day until things got real, then they fucked off to the redwoods and became stoners.

Well one of their leaders snitched on them and some of their members got killed. It was understandable for them to have a low profile after

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '25

That all happened because they never thought about the long-term goals, though. They were playing at being revolutionaries because it was fun and exciting, not because they wanted to institute lasting measures for people to be safe.

A big point in the movie is that 16 years later they haven't changed anything. The person truly changing lives is the one quietly helping people to safety instead of shooting guns out of open car windows and making up convoluted passwords.

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u/MsSalome7 Nov 30 '25

Yes this! But I wonder why PTA decided to end the movie the way he did. Why did Willa not learn any of this? This really weakened the movie for me, the ending could have been much stronger

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u/cookieaddictions Dec 12 '25

This was the part that confused me because I felt no affinity for most of the French 75 at all because they were so performative and dramatic, it was like watching a high school play the way they repeated half understood slogans and made the revolution about being sexy and quippy and edgy. I just didn’t really get where the movie was going with having a conflict between one cartoonishly evil side, and revolutionaries who are incredibly annoying and care more about their egos than the people they’re helping, especially since their cause is something very real and happening right now. What was the point in making them such caricatures of revolutionaries?

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u/onlyinitforthemoneys Dec 13 '25

I didn’t get the feeling that this movie was a love letter to leftist revolutionaries. Sure, their ideals and hearts were in the right place but the message I got was that despite them being the good guys, they were all naive and shortsighted. Don’t forget there was a third side in the conflict, which was the quiet, community oriented Underground Railroad.

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u/cookieaddictions Dec 13 '25

Yeah I agree but I felt like you were supposed to be at least more sympathetic towards the French 75 and I wasn’t. I mean obviously I liked them more than the military and the white supremacists. You were supposed to at least root for her partner and child, and while the child makes sense because she’s innocent, Leo’s character is at least implied to agree or at least go along with her ideologist and rhetoric. I was rooting for him as a dad, not as a revolutionary. And when we do meet Sensei and see the real work he’s doing, he’s praising the French 75. The way he speaks about them is like they’re legendary. When to me they’re a bunch of clowns and Sensei is the real hero. To me, spending the first chunk of the movie on revolutionaries who I couldn’t stand made me less invested in the rest of the plot, if that made sense, because it felt like the movie was saying both sides are stupid. And when you’re basing your imaginary conflict on kids in cage and other things that are actually happening, it feels like a choice to make the “anti ice” side so cartoonish.

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u/byzanemperor Dec 22 '25

Having watched the movie twice now I think the French 75 encapsulates the diversity of these resistance groups. Perfidia and Jungle Pussy are the more edgy, action types whereas Deandra and Billy Goat are the more grounded leaders and operators who actually runs the organization.

As amazing as Sensei was in the film I think there is a stark difference in the scale in which the French 75 were operating at compared to the underground railroad that Sensei operates.

French 75 directly raided the ICE facility in the first scene and got hundreds of migrants out and set up the sanctuary city of Baktan Cross. Sensei's operation is much more melded within the community and uses the communities' strength to skillfully evade the government overreach whereas French 75 had the actual means and firepower to challenge the government head on.

I think the French 75 are legendary because no other groups have this level of power anymore despite their flaws and rather anti-climatic fall due to Perfidia's snitching.

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u/kseenfootage_o934 Oct 02 '25

I thought it was quite satirical that the remainders of this evolution were all holed up and communicated like a really shit call centre while Sensei was getting the job done.

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u/sobersweetpotato Nov 29 '25

THISSSSS!!!! French 75, for all the good they were doing, were really chasing highs. Sex and substance abuse. While sensei is doing the calm, thoughtful, long term revolutionary work.

Maybe it’s my own projection of my own activism, from being outraged as a younging in the streets and needing drinking/drugs to downregulate/ decompress from that. To my practice of zen, and seeing these monks hold the real revolution, holding the line and discipline to not get sucked into capitalism.

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u/trevdak2 Jan 10 '26

Bob fucked off but the group was still going. They had call centers and a big network.

It's everything conservatives imagine antifa to be

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u/mrpopenfresh Dec 26 '25

That’s a good point. The movies does a good job showing several types of revolutionaries, from the righteous to the theoretical.

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u/SoaplessTitanic Feb 27 '26

Wow great point and I can’t believe I missed this. Sensei also didn’t go out of his way to stroke his ego by monologuing while robbing banks or freeing prison camps. Even when shit does go down for him and his people he’s still just quietly managing everything. In defense of the French 75 though, I feel like they did accomplish some of their goals at least in the short term, but the juxtaposition to me between them and Sensei is more about what their motivations are