Not falling for all the hype to rush to see to see One Battle After Another, I picked it up in DVD form at the local library. It received 6 Oscars. That’s rarefied air. Only a dozen or so movies over the past century have gotten that many Oscars. I’m glad I didn’t pay to see it. I have to scratch my head in wonder at how this movie ever garnered so much hardware, or any at all. My only conclusion is that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization that hands out the golden statues, is dominated by left wingers who seek to support movies that follow the left’s narratives. This can most certainly be said of One Battle After Another. The movie follows a group of radical leftists who bomb buildings, rob banks and aid illegal immigrants in escaping the authorities. Several times they are cited as “heroes” just in case viewers don’t recognize the sympathetic story line.

They are being pursued by a grisly cartoonish character played by Sean Penn named Col Steven Lockjaw. I’m not kidding about the name. That alone should have disqualified the movie from any awards. And, honest to goodness, there were a couple of scenes with Lockjaw that could have passed for slapstick humor. I’m sure it was unintentional. Another disqualification was the confusion over who Locjkaw worked for. Initially, it appeared that he was a police officer but then somehow morphed into an army officer, all the while being referred to as a colonel. There is no rank of colonel in police forces whether local or national. There were several scenes when Penn terribly overacts his part as the bad guy. For this he received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Also disqualifying, as with so many left wing inspired movies, this one has a distinct anti Christian flavor. The most obvious is that Lockjaw is earnestly trying to gain membership in a fascist, racist vigilante organization of elites called the Christmas Adventurers Club. In a scene where he is walking through the organization’s headquarters, a sacred Christmas hymn is heard prominently in the background. There are Christian leftist characters portrayed as well, but they all seem to be pretty ugly too. There are the nuns in a monastery helping “the cause,” which often is not very clear. They are known in the underground left for growing and smoking marijuana(there is one scene where a nun is smoking a joint) and having an assortment of lethal firearms. Then there’s the Mexican American character who prays while helping one of the radicals elude capture. In each scene the Mexican has a beer at hand and, worse, in one he is drinking one while driving.

So, what does this 6 time Academy Award winning movie have to offer? It celebrates the fanatical left (I could see close associations with the Antifa movement), encourages violent rebellion against government authorities and offers an all around negative perspective on Christianity. You would think that a movie so lavishly awarded would be a smash hit at the box office. It was a flop and is reported to have lost $100 million. Now that’s one thing that I was happy about.

JERRY KABAT

Williamsport

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