[This looks like an invitation to insurrection.]

Conservatives Take Aim at ‘One Battle After Another’: “Year’s Most Irresponsible Movie”

Oct 7, 2025

While Paul Thomas Anderson's film is being heralded as a masterpiece by many, some conservatives accuse it of potentially inspiring left-wing violence.

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Given that the film is also intensely political — telling the tale of a burned out revolutionary(DiCaprio)who endeavors to save his daughter (Chase Infiniti) from a white nationalist military officer(Sean Penn)— it’s perhaps surprising there hasn’t been more noise so far from those on the right. The film opens with a celebratory raid on an ICE facility to free detainees, and shows government agents coldly executing unarmed suspects and sending an undercover agent into a peaceful protest to throw a Molotov cocktail to justify increased force.

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“You can make excuses for it, but basically the [film is] an apologia for radical left-wing terrorism, that’s what it is,” said Ben Shapiro, who predicted the film will win “all the Academy Awards” due to its politics. “It has the subtlety of a brick … The basic suggestion is a conspiracy theory in which the United States is run by white supremacist Christian nationalists and all people of color and a few nice incompetent fellow travelers like [DiCaprio’s character] are going to take on that entire system. And that system must be taken on at the cost of family, at the cost of friendship, at the cost of decency, at the cost of basic human capacity for success. It is better, in other words, to be a complete loser who wastes your life bombing things randomly in order to free illegal immigrants to run willy-nilly across the border than to be a productive citizen.”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/one-battle-after-another-conservative-reactions-1236394128/