One Battle After Another — One Mistake After Another

I went into One Battle After Another with high expectations—and justifiably so. With Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, and Paul Thomas Anderson at the helm, the film promised ambition, rigor, and depth. Instead, it delivers a series of conceptual and narrative miscalculations that undermine its own premise.

Rather than a thoughtful reflection on rebellion, ideology, or morality, the film unfolds as a collection of implausible choices, ethical oversights, and narrative shortcuts. What could have been a tense, provocative story of resistance ends up feeling like a string of convenient plot devices.

1. Romanticizing Violent Rebellion Is a Dead End

The film depicts rebels attempting to challenge the system through violence. History—and countless failed movements—shows that this strategy rarely succeeds. Armed underground movements more often invite repression than achieve freedom.

Presenting such rebellion without serious political or historical reflection is naïve. The suggestion that freedom can be won through violent secrecy oversimplifies real-world struggle and ignores consequences. Cinema can critique power, but it must do so with clarity and accountability—not fantasy disguised as radicalism.

2. Betrayal as a Narrative Shortcut

The film introduces the betrayal of the movement by a key figure who then disappears. This could have been a rich narrative engine, yet it is treated in a primitive and underdeveloped way.

The disappearance is offered as a plot twist rather than a fully realized moment of tension. There is no psychological depth, no moral reckoning, no meaningful consequence. In a story about loyalty and resistance, betrayal cannot function as a convenient shortcut—it demands resolution. Here, it weakens rather than deepens the narrative.

3. “Reverse Rape” as Narrative Justification

The film introduces a form of “reverse rape” to explain why a white supremacist has sexual relations with a Black woman. This choice is both implausible and ethically troubling.

Instead of examining coercion, power dynamics, or moral hypocrisy, the film uses this device as a contrived explanation that absolves the character of responsibility. Agency is flattened, ideological tension is bypassed, and ethical weight is ignored. The sexual act is treated as a narrative fix rather than a grave moral event, stripping the story of seriousness.

This is not provocative storytelling—it is evasive. When sexual violence is employed to resolve character behavior without consequence or reflection, the film crosses from complexity into irresponsibility.

4. Revolutionary Logic Without Rules

One of the most implausible moments is the main character’s insistence on obtaining information despite not knowing the password himself. Presented as a seasoned revolutionary, he flagrantly violates the most basic rules of clandestine operations.

In any real underground movement, the rule is absolute: no password, no information, no access. Protocols exist to protect the group from infiltration, betrayal, and collapse. By ignoring this logic, the film strips its protagonist of credibility. He acts not like an experienced operative, but like a narrative convenience, exempt from the rules whenever the plot demands it.

5. The Omniscient White Supremacist Trope

The portrayal of white supremacists as omniscient and omnipotent is another serious misstep. They anticipate every move, control all information, and operate with near-supernatural efficiency.

This is not only unrealistic but historically inaccurate. Extremist groups are fragmented, paranoid, and prone to internal error. Granting them omniscience reduces the conflict to abstraction, undermines tension, and transforms villains into mythic caricatures. Reality is replaced by convenience, and narrative plausibility evaporates.

Conclusion

One Battle After Another is not a failure of ambition, but a failure of rigor. Despite a stellar cast and a director renowned for precision, the film relies on shortcuts, implausibility, and ethical evasion. It seeks to appear radical without responsibility, complex without coherence.

In the end, the film stages many battles—political, moral, and narrative—but wins none. What remains is not insight or provocation, but disappointment. A story about rebellion and clandestine struggle should challenge systems and characters alike; this film collapses under the weight of its own contradictions.