Spoiler
Alert: Like most Nolan films, it is at the same time yes and/or no. What do you
mean spoilers? Anyway, one does not understand the Nolan films. So, reading up
is actually recommendable before you go to his films.
A
friend of mine (goes by the handle of @VJ290481) on Twitter put it more
succinctly “One must make sure to read the movie’s Wikipedia plot section
before watching any of Nolan’s films. This way you can follow 50% of the movie,
to get it 100% you gotta be Nolan”
My blog posts are usually
ramblings of my wandering mind. They usually are not reviewing books or
films. But a rare experience comes along and triggers the write button. Nolan,
going forward, should do two options. One, the full-length film; two, a much
shorter version just capturing the essentials, a little longer than the
trailer, but much shorter the full length.
I will split my review also
to the same design.
The much shorter version:
Terrorists storming a swanky setting, people rushing into save, spellbinding
action, the action scene gets over. People conduct normal conversations in city
surroundings. (No, the city does not fold in on them or explode) The scientist explains time-bending science to the hero. The time-bending science is
continuously explained. More action sequences. Movie ends.
The shortest version (A
Bonus)
This one is not written by
me, it is already written within the film itself (Trust Nolan to do those
clever tricks, a loop inside a loop). This is an actual conversation between
the leads in the film
Neil: What
the hell happened here?
The
Protagonist: Hasn't happened yet
The full-length version.
The film starts in the usual
Nolan way. A grand opera. The conductor getting ready to start the proceedings.
You instinctively know the poor guy does not stand a chance. BANG. He is shot.
The opera is taken hostage by a bunch of thugs. Why, where – you must wait for
the police to arrive to find out. The police come. Our protagonist surprisingly named the protagonist, waits with few others, and after applying a
simple Velcro badge of the correct police logo, joins the team of police that
has arrived to rescue. Pulsating music, masked faces, the sleeping audience (in the
film, not in the cinema hall, I mean not yet, it is too early in the film for that to happen) and a fantastic action sequence
later (no one knows whether the rescue operation was successful or not) the
protagonist is tortured and bites on a cyanide bullet to end it all.
GOTCHA!
Not so soon, that was a fake
capsule; everyone knows it except the Russians who were torturing him. All bond
films ridicule the intelligence levels of Russians for ages, but this is
taking it to a new level.
From the opera house to a
ship, you suddenly find the protagonist (TP from now on) sauntering the streets
of good old London, recruiting the most handsome vampire (TMHV in short). TG
and TMHV are not the normal young people that you see on the streets. Listening
to their discussions, they remind you more of a Rutherford and Einstein before
August 1945.
Cue to move to some
underground (physically not metaphorically) lab, where a mandatory white coat
lab scientist explains the trademarked “Nolan and his time obsession” by making
the TG shoot to get the bullet back into the chamber. The ear-splitting almost
real-life imitation sound of a bullet is recreated by the Swedish composer.
(The Swedish composers are probably born with a secret DNA strain that makes
them the perfect fit for apocalypse films – Chernobyl & Joker and now
Tenet)
Jump next to the orgasm
moment for all Indians. TP and TMHV visit Bombay and we have Dimple Kapadia on
screen. Only Nolan can convert the eternally bikini-clad Dimple effortlessly
into an arms dealer. Bobby to Priya is a long road indeed. She is required to
look serious and utter more serious lines and she pulls it off. Not knowing
what is happening around you gives you an immense amount of confidence to
handle the proceedings. For all the troubles they took to travel to Bombay meet
Bobby err Priya, they get just one name. Could have been a simple zoom call.
Back in London, TP sees a
woman you initially mistake for Madame Olympe Maxime. Some mother-son tender
moments play out that makes you think maybe meeting Dimple in Bombay has
reduced Nolan to a Bollywood director. The tallest woman you have seen since
Goblet of Fire turns out to be the wife (estranged or still current is
immaterial as time keeps flowing forward and backward) of the person the name
of who TP and TMHV extracted from Dimple.
She has some background in
being a con artist. Some fake Goya sold to the man (goes by the name Sator) and
he was so pissed off he separates mother and son – much like an 80s Hindi film
villain. I tell you guys; Dimple has had more impact on Nolan than you first
admit. Now follows some typically Nolansque scenes where TP and TMHV crash
(literally and not just any mere crash, this is as big as it gets, how big? –
well, how about a 747 into a freeport?) into the safe, switch the fake and
engage in a fight where there are TP, TMHV, and what you think are two masked
men.
GOTCHA yet again. It was
just one masked man. and one even turns out to be TP himself. So were there 4,
3 or just 2 of them? My bet is on three! But who am I to decipher Nolan?
All is well at this stage.
The tallest woman and TP meet Sator and Sator immediately tells TP that he
plans to kill him. Nice bloke. I like no-nonsense villains. If only he had not
reminded me of Captain Haddock! I could not help smiling whenever he came on
screen. I was looking for TinTin and Snowy in all earnest.
TP and Sator agree to TP
stealing some Plutonium. An edge of the seat burglary and a car chase later the
stolen box of plutonium changes hand so many times that you just do not care
anymore where the damn thing went so long as the car chase ended. Cars sailing
backward, cars moving in formation, good old pass the parcel, some super heavy
fire engines to kick start the process and then back to some time-transition
scene – it is more like watching two channels on the TV at the same time, one
screen a dull grey and other a developing-room red- anyway the scene ends with
the clear conclusion TP does not have whatever it is that he was supposed to
have and instead, he only has the tallest woman to deal with.
Another pincer movement
tryst with the 747 crashing into the freeport and shortly after small
mumbo-jumbo they are all back, ominously deciding that the climax must be in
Oslo. However, Nolan decides it shall be another pincer movement with red and
blue color-coding, expecting that it will make it clear, ha ha ha, and then a lot of army-like people assemble and take off towards an Estonian old
industrial relic that is tailor-made for climax of films that have Armageddon in
their mind.
In between backward
traveling ships and other such visual clues tell you that all is well in Nolan’s
universe.
After that 747 crashing into
the freeport a second time, the tallest woman is back in the pink of her health
and three teams proceed towards the climax.
The Red and Blue team
planning a visually stunning but cerebrally draining maneuver in the above
mentioned Estonian industrial relic while the tallest woman sets out on a tryst
with Captain Haddock (Minus TinTin and Snowy).
Pardon me the overlook, that
I shall correct right now – there is the ever-constant Michael Caine meeting TP
in one of those posh English restaurants where he comments about the nice cut
of the suits that TP was wearing. TPs reply was supposed to be the one frame
blink-it-and-you-miss-it humor quotient of the film.
The said Estonian landscape
has some 9 kinds of stuff gathered by Captain Haddock, no relation to Horcruxes of the
Lord Voldemort, but almost similar, but not exactly the same, which TP and TMHV
must recover and deactivate before the universally accepted green timer clock
ticks down to zero.
No one knows what happens in
those frenzied last 10 minutes of blue and red forging ahead with bombs
exploding and buildings getting fixed in reverse of the explosions (maybe it
was actually 10 mins for blue and 10 mins for red but by this time no one cares
a fuck) and all ends well. TMHV rescues TP and a no-frills and fancy army
captain and they decide to go about their way.
In the meantime, the tallest
woman can’t bring herself around to do a simple sun lotion on the back of
Captain Haddock and shoots him dead.
So, you think the movie
ends!
GOTCHA yet again.
Bobby turned arms dealer
Priya and a mean-looking, albeit incompetent assassin waits outside this posh
English school to kill the tallest woman. Whoever plans a kill in the busy
streets when so much of alleys and empty apartments await?
BHAM! TP kills the assassin.
The assassin deserves that fucking bullet. What sort of an assassin does not
notice his assassin getting in the back
of his car?
This being a Nolan film you
do not dare walk out of the cinema hall before the usher drives you out. So,
you sit through the credits and nothing happens during or after the credits,
fooling you yet again. I have now lost track of the number of times Nolan
gleefully shouted GOTCHA!
Trivia – John David Washington is the son of Denzel Washington
