Ladies and gentlemen. Today I am going to dazzle you by attempting to conduct a movie review in just a single word. Eh-hem. Here it goes. My review for the Christopher Nolan's sci-fi action film Tenet is as follows:
Huh?
If you're confused, well then welcome to the club. This movie is literally a mind bending twister of a puzzle. Just when you think you have the plot figured out, they introduce something else that makes you say, "but I thought...what...wait..."
The good news is...this is a good thing. This movie will have you thinking about it days, weeks, even months after its viewing. After watching it I was reading reviews and interviews trying to get more information about it to try and get a better understanding. It is a film that makes you work for its love. And I wanted to work hard.
I will do my best to explain its premise. The Protagonist, played by John David Washington, starts out trying to stop a terrorist siege at an opera house in our first of many intense scenes. By the way, I'm not being cagey with his name, it is never revealed in the film, just one of the many mysteries. He notices something strange during the assault and eventually is recruited by an organization called Tenet who tells him that there are objects that can move backward in time.
This leads him through a complicated trail of arms dealers, British intelligence officers, and eventually to a Russian oligarch played with particular smarminess by Kenneth Branagh. Our hero is smitten with the man's wife played by Elizabeth Debicki and is determined to both stop him and rescue her.
Helping him along the way is a handler played by Robert Pattinson. I've got to say that Pattison has come a long way from his one note performance as Edward in the Twilight films and has turned into quite a reliable actor. Together the two of them hatch a complicated plan (of course) to take down Branagh. I can't tell you much more than that both because I don't want to ruin anything for you and because I don't quite know how to explain it.
Christopher Nolan is easily the smartest filmmaker there is. His films are always thought-provoking and somehow he still manages to make a tidy profit. Even his Batman trilogy had multiple ethical dilemmas that left one wondering and Inception still keeps me up at nights. The fact that he has so many moving parts in his films and is able to keep track of them all is quite an accomplishment. I'm still not sure I totally get Tenet, but I'm ok with that fact and actually like that there's still some things I will probably never figure out no matter how many times I watch it.
This cross between a James Bond and a Philip K. Dick movie made over $350 million dollars which is considered a disappointment for Nolan films. Because of COVID, Warner Bros. released this in theatres and on MAX at the same time, something Nolan has never forgiven them for. This is why he took his next film, the Oscar winning Oppenheimer, to Universal Studios.
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