Everyone knows Officer James Raterman. He works in every building in the district, and has had an illustrious career outside of Alder. Recently though, Raterman has added a creative pop to his already impressive resume: he is now a movie star.
According to the district website, Raterman “is a highly accomplished professional with more than 30 years of federal, state and corporate law enforcement expertise. He is a retired United States Department of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Special Agent and previously held the positions of Special Agent for the United States Secret Service (USSS), the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation (BCI) and as the Director of Security for a large corporation.”
But this isn’t the only career Raterman has decided to pursue as of late. He is a cast member in the recently released movie “One Battle After Another.” Previously, he was also the focus of “The Trade,” a documentary series that covered Raterman’s missions as a federal agent. The first season covered opioids and the second covered human trafficking.
Surprisingly, Raterman had no interest in acting of any sorts before his role in “The Trade.”
“I wasn’t thinking about doing the documentary and I wasn’t thinking about acting before the director had approached me,” Raterman says. “But it turned out really well. The movie (One Battle After Another) turned out really well and it’s getting a lot of high praise and then my character in the movie is getting a lot of high praise also.”
The series won two International Documentary Association Awards (IDAs), as well as two News & Documentary Emmys. It was nominated for six other Emmys, and two Cinema Eye Honors Awards.
His involvement in this series is what opened the door to his new-found acting career. He had no previous plans of acting until the director, Paul Thomas Anderson personally reached out to him. “The director of this movie watched that documentary (The Trade),” says Raterman. “Then he reached out to me and said hey would you be willing to be in a movie that I’m making called One Battle After Another.”
“One Battle After Another” is described on the movie’s site as follows: “Washed-up revolutionary Bob (DiCaprio) exists in a state of stoned paranoia, surviving off-grid with his spirited, self-reliant daughter, Willa (Infiniti). When his evil nemesis (Penn) resurfaces after 16 years and she goes missing, the former radical scrambles to find her, father and daughter both battling the consequences of his past.”
Filming for the movie started in January, 2024. For Raterman, it ended in June of the same year. For some of the other actors though, it lasted all the way into early 2025.
Almost all of the locations were a good distance away from Plain City. “I’d fly back and forth to California,” Raterman says, “we’d be on location in Eureka, La Prisma, Texas, and remote locations throughout California.”
The movie was officially released in the United States on September 26, and is heavily inspired by the 1990 novel “Vineland” by Thomas Pynchon.
The film is directed and written by Paul Thomas Anderson, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti.
These stars helped Raterman get used to the process of making a film. As Raterman says, “I was specifically helped out by Sean Penn, Regina Hall, and of course Paul Thomas Anderson, the director. They would help me with different camera angles and they’d remind me if we were doing a second scene of a shoot from a different angle, they’d remind me, ‘hey remember that you did this on the first take, remember to do it on the second take, we’re just going to see it from a different angle.’”
Raterman plays the character Danvers. As Raterman says, “in the movie, my character’s role is a right-hand man to Sean Penn, who plays a military colonel, and my role is that of an interrogator.”
This movie serves as Raterman’s first role as an actor. Hence, he believed the experience to be fairly challenging. “The hardest part of filming is you show up on set pretty early in the morning and your scene could get pushed back hours and sometimes even days,” Raterman says. “So you might be there all day long, you’re literally just sitting there and you’re waiting for your scene to be cut to film. And then ultimately it could also be cut in the future.”
Various people have commended his captivating and authentic performance. As Steven Hyden (@Steven_Hyden) says on X (formerly known as Twitter): “Thinking about the guy who plays the military interrogator in ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, genuinely scary and authentic a-hole energy there.”
This is just the start for Raterman. He has plans to continue acting, and believes that the people that he has and will hopefully continue to work with are extraordinary.
“It was really fun,” he says. “The fellow cast members were extremely nice. Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti, the director Paul Thomas Anderson. They’re incredibly nice people to work with and they supported me the entire time I was there.”
