Is there a director working today who has been able to consistently match the crescendo of the last minutes of a Christopher Nolan film? Since Memento (2000) – barring Insomnia (2002), the only remake Nolan has made – the final stretch of most Nolan films could bring corpses to life.In fact, I think one of the most crucial tricks behind his popularity, his ‘prestige’ if you may, might be his ability to finish strong. His weakest film, The Dark Knight Rises (2012), after plodding along for 164 minutes, ends with a spectacular five-minute montage tying all the loose ends of the Batman trilogy. The montage is so good, it almost made me forget what a clunky film I’d seen.In The Odyssey, Nolan delivers his usual rousing climax, but the knockout punch comes a few scenes before. Odysseus (Matt Damon) is talking to his wife, Penelope (Anna Hathaway), for the first time in 20 years. After spurts of flashbacks about the Trojan war peppered through the 173-minute film, this is the first time Odysseus looks back on his storied invasion in the most clear-eyed manner.He describes his ploy of hiding men inside a wooden horse, disguised as a peace-offering to the city of Troy, as a version of the ‘original sin’. Unable to breach the walls of Troy for ten years, the king of Ithaca came up with a way to deceive the Trojan army – “violating all that is sacred between human beings, defiled the house of the Gods”.It’s a gloriously written scene, deftly performed by Damon and Hathaway (on either side of a wall through it). Nolan characterises the mythic Trojan horse as a metaphor for how distrust entered civilisation. It becomes one of the film’s core themes, and Odysseus’s monologue becomes the ‘nutgraf’ for this 2026 adaptation.Adapted from Emily Wilson’s 2017 English translation of the Greek epic (written by Homer in the eighth century BCE), Nolan borrows his irreverence from Ridley Scott’s famously unadorned, anachronistic dialogue. More than one character drops an F-bomb, and parents are referred to as ‘Dad’ and ‘Mum’. It was particularly entertaining to hear Jon Bernthal’s East Coast drawl as Menelaus.It’s tricky territory, where a scene can easily slip into the space of a silly Saturday Night Live sketch. But if done well, filmmakers are betting the audience will accept it as the medium of exchange.The primary challenge of an Odyssey adaptation is depicting the surreal and fantastical, and making it plausible. The one-eyed monster, Polephemus; the alluring songs of the ‘Sirens’; a witch called Circe (Samantha Morton) who turns Odysseus’s soldiers into animals; a monstrous whirlpool (‘Charybdis’) – there’s a lot to trip up a filmmaker like Nolan, whose revulsion for digital effects is well known.It’s credit to him that he uses all the tools at his disposal: clay figures, camera trickery, formidable nature itself becoming representatives of the ‘gods’. A character like Athena (played by Zendaya) niftily moves between being depicted as a real person, a figment of Odysseus’s trauma, and as an idol worshipped.It’s not nearly as meditative as David Lowery’s The Green Knight (2021), but it does well to capture the psychological trance of Lowery’s film in the sequence in Hades (where Odysseus is confronted by the ghosts of his fallen soldiers), and the sequence with Circe, who thinks Odysseus’s men have come to plunder, like most armies.The casting is excitingly diverse too. Lupita N’Yongo playing the twins Helen and Clytemnestra (Aggamemnon’s wife) is feral. Himesh Patel is Eurylochus (Odysseus’s second-in-command), a stand-in for the audience member, simultaneously in awe of his general, but also suspicious.John Leguizamo brings a chilling vulnerability to Eumaeus (Odysseus’s loyal servant and pig-herder). As Sinon, a loyal soldier who sacrifices himself for the ploy of the Trojan horse, Elliot Page is haunting in the one scene when he has to remind Odysseus of the thousands of men sacrificed for his wily schemes.Anne Hathaway in ‘The Odyssey’. Screenshot from trailer.It’s in the final stretch that the film focuses on the palace intrigue in Odysseus’s home, where Penelope has been fending off suitors. While Telemachus (Tom Holland), Odysseus’s son, is wandering between finding closure on a father he never knew, and asserting himself as the rightful heir of the ‘empty throne’ of Ithaca. Hathaway is reliably first-rate as the firm, graceful and strategic Penelope, finding ways to defer having to choose a new king.The two actors who are shortchanged compared to their potential are Mia Goth, playing Melantho (Penelope’s housemaid), and Robert Pattinson, as Antinous.The portion set in Ithaca alone is ripe for a feature film adaptation, something we saw in Uberto Passolini’s The Return (2024), where Ralph Fiennes, plays a silent and pitiless Odysseus. Here, I loved the nuanced depiction of Antinous (by Dutch-Tunisian actor Marwan Kenzari), who is shown to be cunning, ruthless, but also hopelessly in love with Penelope (Juliette Binoche). It makes his eventual death much more tragic.Passolini’s film turns one portion of the epic poem into a stoic Shakespearean tragedy. Meanwhile, Nolan’s version tackles a larger part of the text, and seems to be aiming for the big-screen blockbuster.It also means that Nolan’s film is rarely still – there’s so much ground to cover. In some scenes, the exposition is handled economically, like Odysseus’s seven-year exile on a bewitched island with Calypso (Charlize Theron). However, there are Nolan’s familiar blindspots – conveying reams of information through written dialogue produces exchanges scarcely sounding like conversation between two people. Here, it takes place between Telemachus and Menelaus, when the young man goes to Sparta in search of his father.However, these are little quibbles in a film trying to lasso the moon in less than three hours. Hoyte Van Hoytema’s sweeping visuals make it worthy of the IMAX screen. Ludwig Goransson, who has become Nolan’s trusted collaborator since Tenet (2020), is on assured footing – especially the way he incorporates the ancient Greek instrument, the aulos. Travis Scott’s rap being woven into the script in the form of spoken poetry is a bold, timeless choice.As the film’s protagonist, Damon is committed for his part, but he’s characterised as a leader who, despite moral skirmishes, is redeemable. I imagined Odysseus as a colder man, closer to what Damon has done in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) or Interstellar (2014).Dabbling in existential themes like he often does, Nolan expands the Hollywood spectacle in not only vision and scale, but also intellectual inquiry. By poking holes in the ‘legends’ of war-time heroes, and investigating the roots of masculinity, the screenplay speaks to today’s politics. And while working with one of the most complex source materials out there, he manages to capture the essence for rookies, while also leaving experts with his own insights to chew on.It goes through its share of turbulence, but Captain Nolan confidently rows against the tide, and like Odysseus, brings the Hollywood blockbuster home.*The Odyssey is playing in theatres worldwide.