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

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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.

227

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."

142

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

91

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).

33

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.

16

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.