ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER
A well-shot revolution movie that families and Christians should skip.
Should You Watch It?
Here's the short version: no. Paul Thomas Anderson has real filmmaking instincts — the movie has wild, engaging set pieces and a genuinely suspenseful final chase. That craft is real, and it's why this isn't a one-star disaster.
But craft isn't the issue. The story is built to make a violent Marxist revolutionary sympathetic while painting an underground white supremacist cabal as secretly Christian, and it treats illegal immigration as a moral good that two Catholic churches quietly help along. Layer on more than 150 obscenities and profanities, strong sexual content, and a body count, and you have a film that asks you to root for the wrong side of nearly every argument it makes — including, pointedly, against the church.
The only thread of real virtue is a father's fierce love for his daughter. It's not enough to redeem the rest. Skip this one, and don't let curiosity about the craft talk you into it.
The Story
NO SPOILERS — WE KEEP THE SURPRISESA white communist revolutionary, going by the alias Bob, goes into hiding with his baby daughter after her mother — a fellow radical — walks away from family life. Sixteen years later, father and daughter are living quietly in a sanctuary city when a racist soldier from Bob's past resurfaces, hunting the now-teenage girl. If a DNA test proves he's her real father, he intends to have her killed. Father and daughter are separated, and the chase to reunite them begins.
Is It Any Good?
Three stars means the filmmaking impresses even where the story fails. The action has real energy — wild, unpredictable sequences that hold your attention, and a final chase the review specifically calls suspenseful. Anderson clearly knows how to stage a scene.
But the plot doesn't hold together. The lead character is supposedly born in the 1980s, yet the entire revolutionary-radical premise plays like it belongs to the Weathermen era of the 1960s and '70s. That mismatch makes the film's present-day setting feel arbitrary rather than pointed, and it drains credibility from a story that's already asking a lot of its audience ideologically.
The Worldview
This film's worldview is straightforwardly humanist and communist, and it wants you on its side. It frames violent revolution against American institutions as noble, treats capitalism and border enforcement as the enemy, and depicts open borders and mass illegal immigration favorably — even routing that sympathy through two Catholic churches running an underground network for immigrants, a choice with no biblical grounding.
More troubling is the film's handling of faith: it invents a secret cabal of white racists and calls them Christian, aligning Christianity with hatred rather than truth. Every racist character in the film is white, which gives the whole story an anti-white, anti-Christian slant dressed up as social conscience. That's a conviction worth naming plainly: a film that wants to critique injustice while smearing the church in the process has not told the truth, however good its camerawork.
The one honest note is a father's love for his daughter — imperfect, anxious, but real. Even a communist revolutionary can't escape being made for that. Scripture says it best: "For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the LORD will take me in" (Psalm 27:10). The film gestures at that love without pointing anywhere beyond itself.
The Content Guide
The specifics — spoilers included by nature — so you can judge for your own family.
Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements
Strong humanist, communist worldview is anti-American and anti-capitalist, but mitigated by leading male character’s love for his teenage daughter (they were abandoned by the activist mother because she wasn’t ready to be in a family), plus a secret racist cabal of white men are Christian (which fits in with the movie’s anti-Christian communist worldview), two Catholic churches in the movie run an underground railroad line for illegal immigrants, which isn’t biblical, and leading female teenage character has friends who call themselves “non-binary”, and one teenage male friend in two or three scenes has makeup on his face suggesting cross dressing
Foul Language
At least, 142 obscenities (including at least 113 “f” words), 13 GD profanities, and five light profanities
Violence
Strong and light violence such as bombs explode, but the movie never shows them hurting anyone, police chase criminal revolutionaries, it’s implied one woman deliberately shoots a bank guard dead because he keeps crawling slowly toward her, a man driving one car shoots another man driving another car as the cars pass one another, and the one car crashes, a man is shot dead in the middle of a road, a man shoots a man guarding a convenience store, the man enters the store, and a shootout occurs offscreen between him and three other killers who are apparently going to murder a teenage captive, teenager later enters the store and sees all four men have died, man falls from a two or three-story rooftop but hits tree limbs on the way down, a man in a car chasing another person in a car runs into the other person’s car when the other person leaves that car and lets it run backwards down one of the many hills in the desert road they’ve been driving, a riot starts over an illegal immigration raid, father in one car chases the men who take his teenage daughter in a lengthy chase along desert roads, racist white lieutenant in the border patrol handcuffs a mixed-race teenage girl and forcibly makes her sit down in a church sanctuary so he can run a DNA test on her (he plans to have her killed if the test proves he’s the father), and a man is gassed to death, and his dead body is shown being incinerated
Sex
Strong and crude verbal sexual references (one black female communist revolutionary has a crude nickname she loves to repeat loudly), another black female communist sexually humiliates a military hostage, the hostage is forced to arouse himself, the woman later agrees to have a sexual tryst with the military man if he lets her go after she’s captured, partially depicted and implied sex occurs as woman approaches naked man leaning against a wall, plus a teenage boy has makeup on in two or three scenes and apparently is part of a small group of teenagers who consider themselves “non-binary”
Nudity
Upper male nudity in a few scenes
Alcohol Use
Some alcohol use
Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse
People smoke and leading male character frequently smokes marijuana and tells another man over the phone that his memory has been damaged over the years from all the marijuana he’s been smoking;
Miscellaneous Immorality
All the racist characters are white, so movie has an anti-white ultra-liberal perspective that goes along with its dominant communist worldview.
Talk About It
Questions for the drive home, the dinner table, or the youth group.
The film gives its main character genuine love for his daughter even while endorsing his violent politics. Can real love coexist with a life built on falsehood and violence?
1 Corinthians 13:6 · Micah 6:8This story imagines Christians as secretly behind a racist plot. How should we respond when entertainment misrepresents the church — with anger, silence, or something else?
1 Peter 3:15–16 · Romans 12:17–21The movie treats border enforcement as villainy and illegal entry as heroism. What does Scripture say about respecting the God-given authority of governing bodies?
Romans 13:1–2The daughter receives a letter from the mother who abandoned her — a letter the reviewer says "rings false." What's the difference between real repentance and words that only sound like it?
2 Corinthians 7:10The Final Word
There's real talent on screen here, and that's exactly why this one stings — good craft in service of a story that smears the church, celebrates political violence, and asks you to cheer for illegal immigration and revolution alike. Our answer stands: SKIP IT. For something worth your family's time instead, see our latest.
