Plot
At night, an animal testing laboratory in grimy downtown Oslo is broken into by a group of vegan animal rights activists calling themselves the "urban guerillas". They first release some rabbits, which refuse to leave. They then set the rats free, then cats, which to the horror of the activists, eat the rats. They then release a dog which in turn, again to their horror, kills the cats. They bury the dead animals, vowing to at some point take revenge on "animal oppressing" society. One of them, Sonia, a highly-strung anxiety-stricken woman, keeps the dog and names the dog "Karma".
Meanwhile, three inept stoners and bungling habitual criminals named Odd, Gaz and Flea (Odd, Geir and Kælle in the Norwegian version) sit around in a decrepit apartment, watching the news story about the lab break in. Their shady American friend Roy Arnie arrives and offers them a once-in-a-lifetime job opportunity with Circus Stromowski, a travelling Russian circus led by Ringmaster Igor Stromowski. The lads agree as they are in debt with Roy Arnie, and it is apparently a good money-raiser, and to escape a local gangster named Ivan. However, upon arriving at the circus, they find Stromowski to be utterly deranged, the acts dangerous and performers suicidal. The entire circus is full of useless, miserable has-beens and tired animals that will only perform under the influence of narcotics. What's more, the four lads are actually to be animal handlers with the dangerous animals in the circus stable. The star attraction is "Jimmy", a captive large male elephant who is paranoid of police and with an ear ring and half a tusk sawn off. Roy Arnie gives Jimmy speed to incite the animal to go crazy and perform in the ring for the spectators. At night, he gives Jimmy heroin to sedate him. Soon the elephant is hooked on the drugs, a junkie. The events of the original movie take place entirely in Norway; in the English language version of the movie, the story begins in Britain, and ends up in Norway with the travelling circus.
Roy Arnie admits to the others that he has stolen over a million pounds worth of heroin which he stole from a tanker belonging to the Russian Mafia, and that he decided on the circus to escape them. The four lads hatch a plan to smuggle the heroin out of Norway by putting all the heroin inside the elephant. Roy makes an incision in Jimmy's buttocks, places the bags of drugs inside, and then sews it back up. He has a plan to set up his own circus with the money potentially made from the heroin, the "Roy Arnie Circus", and believes Jimmy to be the key to his dream. However on the night the lads plan to steal the elephant, Jimmy escapes when he is accidentally given speed instead of heroin, and he bolts out of a door left open by the animal rights activists. Jimmy's drug-induced escape causes widespead chaos. Flea comically steals a van with no windshield in the ensuing chase of Jimmy, which leads them up into the frozen moorland.
Three bizarrely-dressed bikers who have been tailing the lads the whole time turn out to be three members of the highly feared "Laplander Mafia" who have been hired by the Russians and are looking for the heroin, and revenge on Roy Arnie. After overhearing their conversations they learn of where the drugs are, and decide to first go after the elephant. Meanwhile, the animal rights activists are hot on Jimmy's trail with the intention of rescuing Jimmy. Jimmy is hunted by a group of trigger happy, redneck-type big game hunters who want to shoot something bigger than a moose for a change. So begins a mad cap cross country road trip to find Jimmy, with different groups with different motives. The four stoners crash a log cabin which is occupied by an elderly American couple, but the three Lappish Mafia bikers find them there, kill the couple and torture the four stoners for information on the whereabouts of Jimmy the elephant.
Jimmy nearly dies on the moors as he begins to go through cold turkey, although a seemingly intelligent and benevolent moose with golden antlers befriends the elephant and attempts to nurse him back to health by nudging him towards water and bringing him grass to eat. The moose pushes Jimmy into a rocky overhang, protecting the elephant from the elements. The moose forces Jimmy to stand on occasion by pushing him up and holding him up with his antlers, bringing back the strength in Jimmy's legs. Over the course of a few painful days, with the moose's help, Jimmy makes a full recovery from the drugs, and again becomes one with nature away from the ugly trappings of man.
When the groups converge on Jimmy's location, chaos ensues which results in most of the people involved getting killed in various ways. As the elephant and the moose escape into the sunset, Jimmy steps on Sonia the activist's dog, Karma, splatting it. Sonia momentarily loses her temper and picks up one of the hunters' rifles and shoots Jimmy in the behind, unwittingly bursting the bags of heroin inside and causing Jimmy to die within minutes (probably of drug overdose). This causes Sonia to recoil in horror in what she has done, and then she and her friend scream and run off. The moose causes a landslide which buries Jimmy's body, and after the moose sits poignantly by the mound of rocks which now entomb Jimmy, it gallops off into the sunset alone. The only other survivors of the massacre, the four stoners, do not witness these events and believing Jimmy still alive they continue to look for Jimmy on the moors. Eventually, they all beat up Roy Arnie for leading them to the situation in the first place, because of his mad circus dreams, and "for Jimmy", "our mate". At the end of the film, full of remorse over what he has done in the past, Roy Arnie goes out alone into a terrible blizzard on the moors to look for Jimmy, who he does not know is dead.
Read more about this topic: Free Jimmy
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“The plot thickens, he said, as I entered.”
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—Charles Dickens (18121870)
“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme
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—Robert Lowell (19171977)