TENET: Review

 

Well, folks, Tenet is finally here! That’s right, it’s the long-awaited Christopher Nolan spy-fi film that’s been touted as the film to bring audiences back to cinemas after a blockbuster-free summer…an action in which you should definitely not partake because, as is detailed in an article from the A.V. Club, going to a movie theater is the LAST thing you should do right now. However, since the film is not available on HBO Max nor PVOD, I have decided to view it at the Parma Motor-Vu Drive-In in Parma, Idaho with some friends – my first time at a drive-in actually. And it was fun.

 

How did the film itself turn out? Umm…well, it’s definitely entertaining. But do you need to go to the theater right now to see it, potentially putting your health at risk? I’d say no, but your mileage may vary based on how much of a Nolan fan you are.

 

Anyway, our story deals with a nameless CIA agent played by John David Washington (by the way, no, his lack of moniker isn’t building up to any great reveal; he’s just credited as “The Protagonist”), who is recruited by a secret organization called Tenet to stop Sator (Kenneth Branagh), a Russian oligarch with the technological means of inverting the entropy of objects – such as bullets, cars, even people – thus causing them to move backwards through time. Unfortunately, Sator plans on using such technology for nefarious purposes, so it’s up to the Protagonist, a fixer named Neil (Robert Pattinson), and Sator’s estranged wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) to stop Sator from causing World War III by any means necessary…including using the inversion technology themselves.

 

The best thing I can say in this film’s favor is that it’s ambitious. I mean, trying to tackle heady subjects like entropy, time flow reversal, inversion, and all the rest while still trying to be an entertaining action film for the average moviegoer cannot be an easy feat. And for the most part, Nolan and company do pull it off. While the scientific explanation scenes do come off a little clunky, they’re not utterly distracting like they were in Interstellar, and they give way to some uniquely trippy visuals. I mean, you’d have to be a robot to not be wowed by an un-inverted man fighting an inverted man or drop your jaw at inverted cars running alongside normal cars.

 

And all the actors seem game for the material. John David Washington brings a natural coolness to his character, Robert Pattinson continues to demonstrate his skills as the wily Neil, Kenneth Branagh devours the scenery as Sator, essentially playing the same character he did in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (does anybody remember that one? No?) but in a better film, and Dimple Kapadia is appropriately mysterious as a Tenet-connected arms dealer named Priya. I’d say the only real weak link in the film is Elizabeth Debicki as Kat, and that’s more a problem with the script than Debicki’s performance, which is solid, but Kat is yet another Nolan female character who doesn’t really have much to do in the film other than get rescued or move parts of the plot around. And what makes it worse is that she’s the one with the most skin in the game, i.e. a son who Sator constantly uses as emotional blackmail, so I’m wondering why she wasn’t the main character.

 

All the technical aspects are solid with Hoyte van Hoytema once again serving as Nolan’s DP, bringing a desaturated, high-contrast look that once again aids in Nolan’s vision. In terms of musical score, Nolan is not working with Hans Zimmer this time around, but instead with Oscar-winning composer Ludwig Goransson (Black Panther, The Mandalorian), who brings his electronic, hip-hop based skills to the table, resulting in a unique score for the film.

 

So, why is it that I’m not totally in love with this film? Well, in order to fully answer that question, like they say in the film, all I have is a word: spectacle.

 

There’s a great video by YouTuber The Royal Ocean Film Society called Confessions of a Christopher Nolan Fanboy, where Nolan’s career is paralleled with that of the late David Lean, director of films like Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and A Passage to India. A key moment in the video is when he brings up Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter and how it was lambasted by the critics for prioritizing spectacle over the small, personal story that it was trying to tell. It’s a trap that a lot of directors fall into, where they become so enamored with the visuals and concepts they wish to convey that they forget about the important stuff like characters and story structure; Ridley Scott is another example of this.

 

And that’s what I think is holding Tenet back from being great; it’s so preoccupied with trying to wow the audience with the visuals or confuse them with the concepts that eventually, it all becomes white noise because there’s not much of an emotional throughline to which we can attach ourselves. And like I said before, the only character with any personal emotional stakes is pushed off to the sidelines for most of the movie, so we’re stuck with a protagonist who, cool and awesome as he is, doesn’t really have any personal investment other than Kat, a woman whom he’s only just met.

 

And the film’s preoccupation with its concepts contributes to its second problem: it’s kind of aimless. I mean, for the first hour or so of the movie, it seems like a Nolan-esque take on the spy genre with the inclusion of the time inversion stuff, but then for the last half hour or so, it transitions into a kitchen-sink, frenetic, incredibly loud (the sound mixing in this movie is really off, as everyone has pointed out) sci-fi war film, which honestly could have been its own movie. It really needed to pick a lane and stick with it.

 

And yet, I was thoroughly entertained by this film. I had fun watching it, but at the same time, I’m hoping this is not an indicator of things to come in terms of Nolan’s future output. I seriously hope he decides to scale back for his next project. If I were in his shoes, I would pick a smaller story with more personal stakes. Who knows, maybe it’s time to revive that old Howard Hughes project with Jim Carrey since enough time has passed since The Aviator. No, seriously, that's a thing.

 

So, all in all, Tenet is not a bad film at all. But it’s definitely not worth risking your life over. If you must see it in theaters, wait until it’s safe. Go to a drive-in if you must. I did, and it’s fun.