24 Hours with Gaspar (2023) Ending Explained: What was in the Black Box?

Yossep Anggi Noen’s dystopian neo-noir movie “24 Hours with Gaspar” is weird in the most colloquial terms. It is not weird in an intentional fashion, where absurdity becomes tonality. Noen’s movie is filled with ideas, chock-full, and force-fitted. That theoretically makes sense. The practical aspect of it is something else entirely. While it boasts fantastic cinematography and mostly reliable acting performances, it’s the editing of the movie, which has to ensure multiple timelines and complex world-building within a compressed time frame of 90 minutes, that leads to a movie having a muddled nature of storytelling. Thus, revelations that occur feel completely out of the blue rather than being pay-offs of threads that had been introduced before.

24 Hours with Gaspar (2023) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:

The World

The world of “24 Hours with Gaspar” is a dystopian nightmare that feels too eerily familiar. In 2025, the class divide has expanded to its logical inevitability. The atmosphere and environment are perpetually cloudy and polluted. People wear breathing masks while walking due to being in the middle of a pandemic with a virus having reached its 36th variant, and of course, the country has become a police state, with surveillance via drones and technology becoming the norm. A newscast reveals the accidental discovery of a mass grave, hiding over 200 dead bodies, which Gaspar was investigating when we first met him. It could be inferred that this is a world where rebellion or questioning against the state is crushed with an iron fist.

Who is our protagonist?

Our protagonist is Gaspar. Born with a congenital heart disease on the right side rather than the left (dextrocardia), the boy would be convinced of his uniqueness as a form of magic or divine ordinance by the old man who had adopted him, termed Babaji. Babaji would entertain and entice him with old Vaishnavite legends. One of those legends would be about a mythical black box that has the power to fulfill any wishes. Gaspar, intrigued, answered Babaji’s query by stating that he would like a friend.

Gaspar finally stumbled across a young girl named Kirana, who lived in the neighborhood with her father, Wan Ali. They soon became fast friends, with Kirana wholeheartedly believing in Gaspar’s proclivity and obsession with being a detective, inspired by pulp novels written by the novelist Arthur Hararap. One day, Kirana disappeared from Gaspar’s life because her father moved away with her. He still remembered Kirana asking for his promise to find her if she ever disappeared.

As a child, he had paid it no mind, but her disappearance and the fact that she hadn’t tried to contact him made him regret it. An amateur sleuth who had managed to inculcate a team of informants around him, riding around in a bike that might or might not be sentiently titled Cortazar, Gaspar, having grown up, starts investigating in earnest.

What does Gaspar discover about Kirana?

Gaspar obtains some vaccine samples that had been stolen from the lab by one of his informants. In 2025, during the 36th version of the plague, the vaccination drives were conducted only for those who were close to the government. The vaccine had provided the inoculation, but it had also resulted in multiple organ failures, leading to an increase in the demand for viable organs.

This leads to a rampant organ trafficking business that is prevalent in this dystopian world. The information supplied by his informants, which had also led to their being killed while procuring said information, revealed to Gaspar that Kirana had been sold off by her father, Wan Ali, in organ trafficking. Gaspar, however, also learns that his artificial heart is malfunctioning and that he currently has 24 hours to live. With the remaining time left, Gaspar decides to take revenge on Wan Ali.

What was Gaspar’s plan?

Gaspar had learned from his informants that Wan Ali’s daughter had been admitted to the Hartati Dibyo Clinic once she had fallen sick following her being sold off into organ trafficking. That clinic, it turns out, currently belongs to Wan Ali, and right now, Ali’s sister-in-law, Bu Tati, keeps residence. After having racked up enormous amounts of debt from her husband, who had killed himself, Bu Tati had been more than thankful to be allowed to stay in the clinic. Gaspar had been patiently trying to extract information from the confused old woman, and while he couldn’t obtain much information about Kirana, he did learn about Ali’s jewelry store. This jewelry store was owned by both Wan Ali and Bu-Tati’s son, Yadi, who had a strained relationship with his mother.

Gaspar is convinced that the mythical black box of legends is under Ali’s ownership and decides to rob him and the store. To that end, he starts recruiting his team. The first recruit he obtains without even her asking for his permission is Agnes, the owner of a fight club where the impoverished would vent their frustrations with their fists. Agnes shared the same dream as Gaspar of becoming an amateur detective and wanted to be trained by him.

Gaspar then tries to convince his childhood friend/ex-girlfriend Kick and her boyfriend Nyet. Kick had been resistant to the idea because she also remembered Kirana and Gaspar’s obsession with her and searching for her, as well as his penchant for crafting stories and being led by folktales. It is also the reason why both Nyet and Kick didn’t initially believe that Gaspar would die within 24 hours. But they are ultimately convinced because living below the poverty line in a world where gas has become a rarity and dried-up batteries would be the last recourse for sustenance, an alternative method to make money would be the only logical step.

The next recruit that Gaspar convinces to join is Bu-Tati. He had investigated Wan Ali and Bu-Tati’s husband and had learned something that shocked Bu-Tati. Her husband, Bachtiar S. Abdillah, hadn’t killed himself but had been murdered. Bachtiar, back when he had been living in prosperity, had helped Ali out of a financial jam and had started a business with him. However, he had also mistakenly shown Ali his most prized possession—a magical black box that showed the holder his most earnest desire.

When Ali learns that Bachtiar has obtained his prosperity due to the box, he hatches a plan, kills him, and steals the box, later dumping Bachtiar’s body in the river. Having obtained Bachtiar’s fortune, he lies to Bu-Tati about the debt and her husband’s suicide. All these revelations contribute to her agreeing to aid Gaspar in robbing the store.

The final recruit that Gaspar obtains is Yadi, Bu-Tati’s son. Gaspar had managed to obtain CCTV footage of the room where Yadi’s wife and Ali had been conducting their affair, right under Yadi’s nose. This convinces Yadi to join the team, where they, along with the rest of the team, sketch out and hatch a rudimentary plan to break into the store. Nyet also helps Gaspar by pointing out the location of a secret stash of weapons that they could use for the stickup.

Does Gaspar’s plan succeed?

In this weirdly idiosyncratic world, while it is never explained how Ali knew to have henchmen and guards around him when Gaspar conducted his heist, Ali had enough of a force around him to break Gaspar’s spirit. Thus, the team suddenly has cold feet and runs out of the location. Gaspar and Agnes ride out on a bike, with the rest in Nyet’s car.

A furious chase ensues, with Ali’s henchmen following them. Both Kick and, surprisingly, Bu-Tati manages to hit and slow down the henchmen. However, they are unable to enjoy their escape as Nyet’s car overturns and falls into the river, with all of them trapped inside. Having failed to sketch out an alternate plan, Gaspar and Agnes had to restart their heist on the fly, with lesser (apparent) numbers and time running out.

Agnes, wearing Gaspar’s jacket and helmet to obfuscate her identity, drives the bike and leads the henchmen on a merry-goose chase until she stops at a garage, where the goons are cornered by all the members of Agnes’ fight club. Agnes delivers a resounding speech, effectively blaming the economic and class divide on these individuals and the man they represent, driving those men into a frenzy. As a riot breaks out, with those henchmen presumably beaten to death, Agnes rides away.

24 Hours with Gaspar (2023) Ending Explained:

What was in the Black box?

Meanwhile, Gaspar had sneaked back to Ali’s jewelry store and, after a brutal fight, had managed to cut off Ali’s thumb so that he could access the warehouse that Gaspar and Nyet had previously followed Ali to while they had been procuring the weapons. Gaspar had also tried to ask Ali about Kirana’s location, but he had refused to answer.

As “24 Hours with Gaspar” ends, we see Gaspar entering the warehouse to find several little girls being imprisoned. The rooms adjoining the cells contained freezers with the harvested organs inside them. It can be reasonably inferred that Kirana, too, had suffered the same fate as these little girls had come for them before Gaspar rescued them. It proved that Wan Ali had been working in the human trafficking business, and the state had been equally complicit in this business.

The final room, though, contains the black box, and as he opens it, he sees a miniature version of Kirana inside it. Because the black box is mythical or magical in origin, one can surmise that this is the box fulfilling Gaspar’s final wish of attaining closure. The miniature version of Kirana within a box is seen sitting with her feet close to her chest, as if within an enclosed space, which could be reasonably inferred from how the real Kirana spent her final days. While Gaspar, being an amateur detective, was what Kirana had counted on, he had been too late to rescue her, but he did manage to rescue the little girls from sharing Kirana’s fate.

In the final sequence, we see the rest of Gaspar’s team, thankfully alive, entering Ali’s store. Ali was still lying on the ground, unresponsive, presumably dying. The rest of the team manages to get their hands on the gold, which would presumably help them stave off this poverty and live the rest of their lives as peacefully as possible in this hellscape.

As for Gaspar, his heart finally starts giving out as he is riding his bike through a field. As the bike crashes and his body falls into a field submerged partially by the rain, he flits in and out of consciousness. We see a handful of people rushing towards his body, apparently to help him, but later revealing that they are stealing Gaspar’s clothes, shoes, and anything off of his body that might be valuable to them.

In a world filled with sci-fi concepts and intertwined with magic realism, it might not be out of the realm of possibility that Gaspar has survived. The movie’s ending does show the countdown running out, and the only way he could have the second chance he talked about so much is through a miracle. The movie’s choice to cut away while Gaspar is still breathing might be its sloppy way of keeping him alive within the ether of the motion picture, and considering how magical realism is utilized in its unexpected introduction, a reversal of death wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility.

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Trailer:

24 Hours with Gaspar (2023) Movie Links: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia, Letterboxd
Cast: Reza Rahadian, Shenina Cinnamon, Laura Basuki, Dewi Irawan, Kristo Immanuel, Sal Priadi, Iswadi Pratama
Genre: Drama/Mystery & thriller, Runtime:1h 38m

Where to watch 24 Hours with Gaspar