Director: Christopher Nolan
150 minutes (12) 2020
Warner Bros. 4K Ultra HD
Rating: 9/10
Review by Christopher Geary
A nameless CIA agent (John David Washington, BlacKkKlansman), identified here only as the Protagonist, investigates a sinister plot against life, the universe, and everything. His mission to save the world is aided by skilled colleague Neil (Robert Pattinson, Twilight, High Life, Cosmopolis), and involves art expert Kat Barton (Elizabeth Debicki, Princess Diana in TV series The Crown), in hard confrontations with Russian super-villain Sator (Kenneth Branagh) whose Machiavellian ambitions puts all existence at great risk. Globe-spanning adventure, from Oslo to Mumbai, and back again, is essential for such movies. But, what if you meet yourself going the other way?
Complexity of narrative unfolds like a grand puzzle, part jigsaw, part chess-problem, part spy-fi conspiracy, where memory collides with deep secrets hidden even from the Protagonist himself. Following convoluted SF, like Rian Johnson’s Looper (2012), and the Spierigs’ Predestination (2014), this fascinating exercise in precognitive mystery and metaphysical crimes has a time-machine called the ‘Turnstile’ that weirdly inverts entropy for objects and people. Ever since Memento (2000), intellectual auteur Christopher Nolan has been playing in paradox sand-pits, with a requirement for perceptual adjustments, finding order in the chaos of a new-style hyper-reality. A car-chase in Tenet explores far more than just fast-moving vehicles on a roadway. Viewers must question what’s happening on-screen during violent action scenes that re-mix layers of cause and effect, into bizarre and practically cartoonish live-action, often with an intentionally comical affect, that only makes any sense, later on, when cleverly re-played from another perspective.
Fans of Nolan’s brain-melting escapades, for movies like Inception (2010), and intricate drama of magical secrecy in The Prestige (2006), should fully appreciate how cerebral aims lead to rare moments of a wonderful ambiguity, eventually hitting moving-targets we cannot see at first. Story-telling with fractured episodes and fragments of need-to-know info, taken out of its contextual meaning, defy simple logical explanation. Learning can match discovery, if the timing is right. Stunts and visual effects blend into seamless stunning unity for some impressive, kinetic impacts. Nolan piles on greater scope and effortless scale to reach a climax that depends on many tiny details for complete success. Change one variable, and nothing works exactly as planned, unless there are second and third chances to correct faults and mistakes. As a master-class in movie editing, Tenet scores very highly. Pattinson and Debicki easily steal the main acting honours. Michael Caine enjoys a nice sit-down cameo as British agent Sir Michael Crosby, Clemence Poesy coasts though vital exposition as the scientist, while as a military team-leader Aaron Taylor-Johnson brings a hefty dose of rationality just before plotting is lost in confusion.
Avoiding 007 clichés, like Bond is a nasty rash, Nolan subverts generic standards in every way possible, for a science fictional picture that remains, recognisably, a super-spy movie. Despite nine seconds of violence cut from this British version (for a certificate 12, instead of an uncut 15 rating), this thriller excels at what Nolan always does best. It delivers amazing staging of explosive action scenes that engage your mind equally as well as pricking your nerves.
