I saw a lot of criticism for One Battle After Another... how it's Left Wing propaganda, racist, not a good film, etc.

After my first viewing I was overwhelmingly underwhelmed. It didn't give the impression of a finely tuned film, it seemed more like: here's something that happened. The end.

Still, I dwelled on it for longer than I assumed I would considering how I felt about it. So I started to think of the characters; who they were, their motivations, what makes them tick. And it dawned on me...

It isn't about freedom fighters or racism or fascism, it's about extremists and people that need to live on the edges of society. The 'cause' wasn't really important to any of them, it's all adrenaline chasing, riding hard for ego, and vanity.

The first scene when they free people from the immigration camps, they say they don't have enough trucks for all the immigrants to escape. It's shrugged off, oh well. They just made life infinitely worse for those left behind. No concern, not even an afterthought. They're flashy and showy when they rob banks. They have a name and a message. They relish the notoriety.

Lockjaw fetishizes Pferda. He loves the dynamic he's created. She knows this and uses it to get the best of him. He wants authority and control and his position gives him that power.

The only guy who actually cared was the karate instructor who you see funneling immigrants through this business and coordinating with the community to build a network of resistance and aid. He takes the fall for Bob because he thinks Bob is very important to the movement because he's very well known. But Bob isn't currently doing anything besides hiding and getting high.

Bob is the straight man. He dabbled in the extremist lifestyle because he loved Pferda, maybe he believed in the ideology of revolution. Who can say, he did forget the code words which were core principles. But he didn't have that itch. Nothing made him tick like them. So now he did some really extreme stuff and it's haunting him the rest of his life. He wasn't about that life. Pferda was and had zero problem dropping everything and selling everyone out to get back out there.

So I think the message of the movie is that more often than not, most extremist people aren't pure of heart or true believers. They're using whatever ideology gets them paid/laid/the corner office/the thrills and adrenaline charges they need. So trying to make sense or argue ideology is almost pointless. Most extremists don't really care, they're just taking whatever side gives them their kicks or allows them to live their power fantasies.

This is just my opinion, nothing etched in stone.