'' ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER '' : FILM REVIEW SNIPPET

' Exploring Left-Wing Activism ' : Though very different in style and tone, Paul Thomas Anderson's  One Batlle After Another [2025] and Kelly Reichardt's The Mastermind [2025] both critique what they see as the strategic inadequacy and self-indulgence of left-wing activism, as well as explore its personal cost.

One Battle After Another sees former revolutionary Pat Calhoun, aka 'Bob' [ Leonardo Di Caprio ], trying to rescue his daughter Willa [ Chase Infiniti ] from the clutches of a psychopathic white supremacist colonel, Lockjaw [ Sean Penn].

Though Bob had, in a previous life, resisted the federal government's cruel, racist immigration policies through a series of daring raids on detention centres, fatherhood and excessive cannabis use have dulled his revolutionary edge. Instead, Bob is a somewhat incompetent buffoon.

The film mines, for comedic purposes, his shambolic attempts to communicate with the '' French 75 '' - the revolutionary army of which he was once part, modelled on real-life revolutionary groups of the 1960s and 1970s.

Stumbling around in his bathrobe, he has forgotten all the codes and conventions necessary to navigate this world. From passwords to pronouns, Bob is out of step with the times.

However, the film finds room to poke fun at the sanctimony of the left too.

As Bob grows increasingly aggressive when unable to secure information regarding a crucial rendezvous point, the thin-skinned radical to whom he is speaking on the phone informs him that the language Bob is using is having a detrimental impact on his well-being.

If Bob lacks the competence to support the revolution, the people in charge of it are too fragile to achieve one either.

The World Students Society thanks Gregory Frame, a Teaching Associate in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Nottingham in the UK.