Movie Review: Tenet

Christopher’s Nolan’s latest movie is half-baked, rather than ambitious.

Since its announcement a few years ago, Christopher Nolan’s latest film, Tenet, has been shrouded in mystery. After some delays due to the global pandemic, Tenet is finally in theatres, but the result is a confusing, poorly-written, self-indulgent mess that any fan of Nolan’s would be wise to skip.

Tenet follows the Protagonist (John David Washington), a secret agent who learns about inversion, a process through which certain objects can be made to move backward in time. This leads to cool sequences such as people being shot by bullets that are rapidly pulled into guns, rather than shot from them. The Protagonist is then informed that, for some reason, people in the future have decided to wage war on the present, and for this purpose they’ve created inverted objects for one Russian man, Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh), to mess around with. The Protagonist’s mission, therefore, is to stop Sator from ending the world. Obviously.

Supposedly, Nolan made a conscious effort to abstain from any influence of the spy genre other than his own memory, and it shows. Tenet has its protagonist jump from location to location with very little obvious reason and seems disconnected for almost the first full hour as if the characters are just waiting for events to be set in motion. The first scene takes place in Ukraine, does not feature inversion in any meaningful way, and is barely ever referenced later. The Protagonist’s first two contacts make a point of hiding information from him and the audience: “Tenet” Martin Donovan’s character says, alluding to an in-universe spy organization which is never properly explained, “it’ll open some of the right doors, some of the wrong ones, too”. These kinds of nothing-statements are abundant throughout the movie’s first half.

It’s lucky that Nolan was able to assemble such a talented cast for this film. Unfortunately… most of the actors are tasked with playing characters so emotionless, they’re neither likable not unlikeable

With the plot of Tenet a total wash, it’s lucky that Nolan was able to assemble such a talented cast for this film. Unfortunately, even here, the movie stumbles, as most of the actors are tasked with playing characters so emotionless, they’re neither likable nor unlikeable. The Protagonist is so clinical in his speech and mannerisms that he’s entirely uninteresting. Sator is a capable villain, but almost too perfectly evil, despite having an (on paper) compelling, tragic backstory. Elizabeth Debicki’s Kat – Sator’s estranged wife – falls flat as the movie’s emotional core, since her character is so emotionally distant she’s impossible to connect with.
The only standout performances are Robert Pattinson as Neil, who seems to be the only actor actually having fun on set, and Dimple Kapadia as Priya, one of the Protagonist’s contacts whose role easily rivals Judi Dench’s M from James Bond.

Though Nolan is well-known for including telling rather than showing in his movies (often to their detriment), he relies mostly on visual storytelling for Tenet. While this works mostly against the movie in this case, Tenet features some great action sequences. A notable scene (shown twice during the film from different perspectives) has the Protagonist fighting an inverted soldier, meaning that, while the Protagonist fights going forward in time, his opponent’s movements are all reversed. This leads to some bizarre visuals, including wrestling moves that were filmed and then replayed backward, one character sliding along the ground in a way that cannot possibly occur when time is working correctly, and the same character being sucked under a collapsing garage door at the climax of the fight. Another scene near the end shows a “temporal pincer attack”, in which a city is raided from the past and the future simultaneously.

Tenet is well-acted, interestingly directed, and features some pretty cool action scenes. At the same time, the actors play uninteresting characters, the plot is awful and confusing, and the rules of the world don’t make sense. Ultimately, despite the hype, Tenet is not worth your time.

3/10