Film

One Battle After Another

A stoned, paranoid ex-revolutionary and his fiercely capable teenage daughter get yanked back into the fight he thought he'd buried when his old nemesis resurfaces after sixteen years. Paul Thomas Anderson turns Pynchon's countercultural chaos into something loose-limbed and live-wire — part crime thriller, part family drama, part absurdist comedy. DiCaprio is frazzled and funny; Sean Penn is gloriously monstrous. For anyone who wants their action movies a little unhinged.

TMDb rating7.3

If you liked this

Inherent Vice2014

Paul Thomas Anderson already turned Pynchon into a stoner-detective riff once before, sharing the same hazy dread, deadpan comedy and government paranoia running through Bob's world. If OBAA's vibe hooked you, this is the purest chaser.

But Deliberately shapeless and hard to follow — the plot dissolves on purpose, which some viewers find maddening rather than dreamy.

Inherent Vice poster

The Big Lebowski1998

The template for the lovable, weed-addled ex-something stumbling through a plot too big for him — Bob's got Dude energy, just with a real gun pointed at him this time.

But Broader and goofier; the Coens play it for pure comedy where OBAA keeps circling back to genuine dread.

The Big Lebowski poster

No Country for Old Men2007

Want another antagonist who feels like weather rather than a man? This has one, plus the same slow-building comic dread underneath a relentless chase.

But Bleaker and quieter — almost no jokes, and an ending that refuses the catharsis a chase movie usually promises.

No Country for Old Men poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Medium Cool1969

Both films drop a fictional radical or journalist into real political upheaval to ask what commitment costs a person — Medium Cool did it live, with actual riots, decades before Anderson restaged the same idea as farce.

Shot amid actual 1968 Chicago riot footage, blurring documentary and fiction the way OBAA blurs comedy and radical history — a genuine artifact of the era Bob's revolution supposedly belonged to.

But Loose, unpolished, and very much of its moment — a hard sell if you want tight plotting rather than a time-capsule feel.

Medium Cool poster
More like this (8)

Uncut Gems2019

The same runaway-train anxiety DiCaprio brings to Bob, just wearing a diamond dealer's tracksuit instead of a hoodie. Pure controlled-chaos filmmaking, wall to wall.

But Sandler's character is far less sympathetic — two hours of a man sabotaging himself, with no daughter around to redeem him.

Uncut Gems poster

Children of Men2006

A reluctant protector hauling a vulnerable young woman through a collapsing, surveilled state — far more serious in tone, but the same engine of flight and protection.

But Grim and unrelenting in a way OBAA never quite is; there's very little comic relief to catch your breath.

Children of Men poster

Three Days of the Condor1975

The granddaddy of the paranoid-government-versus-lone-man thriller, made when the genre still felt dangerous and new. Bob's world has this film's fingerprints all over it.

But Slower and talkier, very much a product of its era's pacing, with none of OBAA's jittery comic bursts.

Three Days of the Condor poster

Little Miss Sunshine2006

If you loved the ramshackle, dysfunctional-family-on-the-run comedy humming under OBAA's chaos, here's a gentler cousin — a broken family driving toward disaster and love in equal measure.

But No violence, no radicals, no government conspiracy — just a smaller, warmer story that might feel slight after OBAA's scale.

Little Miss Sunshine poster

The Manchurian Candidate1962

Political paranoia and buried conspiracy, with a villain rotten to the institution rather than just the man — a classic blueprint for the government menace Lockjaw represents.

But Cold War specifics date it, and its style is starchier and more formal than OBAA's loose, jittery energy.

The Manchurian Candidate poster

Logan2017

A burnt-out old antihero dragged back into violence to protect a young girl who might be more capable than he is — same shape as OBAA, superhero wrapping.

But Comes loaded with X-Men mythology that might feel unwelcome if you're not already invested, and it plays its melodrama fully straight.

Logan poster

Face/Off1997

Same DNA — a righteous man versus a theatrically evil antagonist, family stakes underneath the spectacle — just with all the irony stripped out and the dial turned to eleven.

Pure operatic, over-the-top action trash, where a monstrous nemesis and a desperate parent's mission collide at maximum volume — the id version of what OBAA does with a wink.

But Zero interest in political nuance or comedy of manners — it's gleeful camp, which might feel cheap after OBAA's ambitions.

Face/Off poster

The Company You Keep2012no page yet

Both ask what a lifetime of 'the cause' costs a parent and a child decades on; this one answers with grief instead of stoned comedy, taking the same wound completely seriously.

Robert Redford plays an aging former radical whose past catches up with him and threatens his bond with his daughter — the sober, unhurried drama version of Bob's exact situation.

But Straight-faced and low-key where OBAA is a live wire — no jokes, no chaos, just quiet reckoning.

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