After three delays due to the 2020 pandemic and tons of hype from the press, the new action thriller Tenet has arrived in theaters, and it’s definitely become a movie Hollywood is really riding on to be successful. And overall, I’d say it’s….good. It’s not an instant masterpiece, but it isn’t a total step backwards for him either. Christopher Nolan often comes off like an anti-Michael Bay to me- where Bay favors big crass mayhem, Nolan is more interested in crafting stories that are meant to have the viewer ponder and muse on what they saw.
This is one of his works that shows his love for elaborate, big concepts and plot elements designed to feel mysterious and keep the audience guessing. In fact, you can expect a number of moments where you’re having a good time but then it’s “what the….what the heck is going on?” It’s evident in how John David Washington’s lead character is only acknowledged as “The Protagonist”, a CIA agent whose real name is top secret. He’s recruited for a spec-ops mission in Kiev to rescue a fellow spy and get a strange item. Nolan directs this scene with a ton of dramatic flair, showing he hasn’t lost his touch for engulfing the audience into his narratives.
When the raid goes awry, he’s awakened by his superiors and informed that his fellow soldiers were killed by an organization from the future. Washington’s character is sent to a group called “Tenet” that researches objects with inverted entropy, resulting in bullets that move backward and are “caught” by the pistol. These artifacts are keys to a strange conspiracy involving the Russian arms dealer Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh). Along with a Tenet member named Neil (Robert Pattinson) and Sator’s suffering wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), the Protagonist sets out to uncover his link to the group from the future, and their manipulation of time that has the potential to bring about the end of the world.
And that’s as simply as I can describe Tenet’s plot, because I’m probably going to have to watch it three more times to pick up every detail and hidden clue Nolan’s laid out here. It’s not inaccessible enough to where it’s not a fun ride, but like Inception, if you’re not playing close attention it can be easy to lose track of something crucial. Parts of the movie reminded me of a hybrid between a James Bond film (maybe it was because there was a No Time To Die trailer before Tenet, so I may have had Bond on the brain) and the Red Dwarf “Backwards” episode.
Nolan pushes the trope of time manipulation (which he dubs ”inversion”) as far as he can, and Hoyte van Hoytema provides some nice atmospheric cinematography to help here, which really aids the fight scenes. They’re not quite as visceral as in a John Wick film, but they’re not too far off. The red and blue contrasts in a room containing a time-altering device I felt was very stylish and made its scene all the more foreboding.
The movie is much more plot-driven than it is by its characters, but their development was good enough for me to remain invested in their troubles. For one, Washington deserves some credit for giving The Protagonist a degree of charisma and empathy- mostly playing the role straight, but sometimes working in an occasional quip with shades of a Sean Connery- and his arc eventually does become more personal as he learns the extent of his connections to Tenet.
Pattinson is an entertaining and charming sidekick alongside him, and the bond Washington forms between him and Debicki is actually genuinely sweet at times. Branagh is downright terrifying in the main antagonist role at points, and he definitely has helped craft a character the audience will want to see get their comeuppance.
While the score from Ludwig Goransson is atmospheric and suitably intense (especially during the opening battle at the opera house), there are some serious issues with the sound mixing, and it’s becoming a noticeable problem in Nolan’s films. I’m not the only person who’s complained about how difficult it was to make out some of the dialogue. It wasn’t bad enough to where I didn’t care about what was happening, but this is a movie that was made for close-captions.
Were Tenet a more emotionally open film and not so consumed with giving the audience riddles to solve, I think it could have been even more amazing because the character dynamics we are given I felt were pretty endearing. As it is, it’s a visually thrilling adventure film that isn’t afraid to be more high brow than its contemporaries, and it definitely has the “blockbuster” feeling Dark Knight and Inception had. It’s not the instant classic those two were, but it’s another one you should catch if you’re into Nolan’s catalog.
If you’d had the opportunity to see it, swing by @Official_FAN on Twitter as always and let us know your thoughts on it!