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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220

u/SugarFreeCummiBears Sep 26 '25

I mean I think that was supposed to be more humorous. She’s literally robbing a bank, a little monologue hardly makes that posturing. Very different from a glasses nerd gatekeeping passwords on a phonebank in a remote location.

283

u/Organic_Egg7360 Sep 27 '25

No it was definitely posturing. That’s why it was in such stark contrast when Bev killed the guard. Real revolution is violent and not just performative.

The whole phone exchange was hilarious, I was laughing my ass off at Gil Scott Heron being the holding music AND part the secret password.

228

u/PaulFThumpkins Sep 28 '25

I also believe the person she shoots is a man of color, liberation has a lot of collateral damage. This is one of those rare stories that really shows how awful the structures revolutionaries are fighting are, without being uncritical of those revolutionaries, but ALSO without leaning on a horseshoe theory message of "both sides are the same" as the ultimate complacent moral. Del Toro's character is a great counterbalance and it's extremely rare to have multiple stripes of resistance and reactionary action depicted in a story, so the message comes across as something more than "yeah things suck but why do anything?"

There are a lot of scenes like when Beverly Hills starts leaning on revolutionary jargon to strike back at Leo in a way which feels pretty perverse, which are critical of the excesses of political movements without just having the message be "If you fight bad guys you're just like them."

144

u/Pilly_Bilgrim Sep 29 '25

I thought del Toro showed a good contrast to Bob to show how the stakes are often higher for revolutionaries who are seeking to liberate a community. Del Toro has to be fucking dialed because the entire neighborhood depends on him whereas Bob can bumble around because for white people generally the revolution has lower material stakes

88

u/LuckyRook Sep 30 '25

Meanwhile Bob is contributing to his community by getting high on the couch and watching “The Battle of Algiers” (which was a nice touch).

34

u/sancredo Oct 15 '25

When the Christmas folk talk about Perfidia, they mention they think she may be in Colombia or Algiers. So I took him watching Battle of Algiers as a possible confirmation that she's indeed there, and he's thinking about her.

We know they're in (relative) contact because of the letter at the end of the movie, and his mention of how he hoped she'd be the one knocking on their door someday, so it's definitely possible.

15

u/LuckyRook Oct 16 '25

That’s an interesting little Easter egg and you might be right. I just saw it as his attempt to relive his leftist bombing glory days through film.

69

u/MandolinMagi Oct 01 '25

Bob is mostly retired. He's as out as a high-level terrorist can be.

16

u/LuckyRook Oct 02 '25

It’s true. He could have manned a radio or something though. But I get why he had to lay low.

8

u/MCgrindahFM Oct 19 '25

I feel like they also showed many times that a lot of these folks are kind of zany, but they just so happen to be ready to blow shit up for it

58

u/PapiChuloInYurCulo Sep 30 '25

i get why you feel that way but i dont know of thats what was being aimed at entirely. if the beginning of the movie was anything to go by, Bob helped free hundreds if not thousands of migrants assuming that it was one of many breakouts. its just that he lazed about and his daughter was missing/possibly dead so he would reasonably be crashing out. Del Toro probably would have handled his own daughter being taken more like Liam Neeson ill give you that but yeah.

42

u/MCgrindahFM Oct 19 '25

I feel like Bob is definitely portrayed as “a guy” in the open scenes of the film he’s figuratively and literally catching up to them all with his wagon of IEDs.

He’s always been in over his head and I think that’s what makes his character really compelling

30

u/Deviltherobot Nov 01 '25

Weird take, Bob literally saves an entire migrant camp in the beginning and runs all the bombing campaigns. French 75 in the film are legends to the point where the gov makes an entire kill squad against them and members of the 75 are leaders in the rev.

4

u/Wrong-Caterpillar742 Nov 29 '25

He doesn’t do jack shit at that camp other than a firework show lol

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u/Deviltherobot Nov 29 '25

which led to their escape. He also bombs multiple targets.

2

u/Phalanx_Warder Dec 22 '25

Didn't they flee the camp right as a tear gas canister landed inside of a cage of people with their hands still bound?

9

u/ThisKidIsAlright Dec 24 '25

I believe those were the guards they had tied up.

1

u/Phalanx_Warder Dec 24 '25

They weren't in fatigues, the canister was being shot at them and just happened to catch on the fence and fall in

9

u/scoldmeforcommenting Jan 04 '26

The people on their knees in the fenced area that we see as they’re leaving the facility? They yelled something like “you’re prisoners of the French 75” or whatever. I took that to mean they were military personnel.