Tenet (2020) - Movie Review

After diverting from his usual illusionist ways in 2017 with Dunkirk, writer/director Christopher Nolan seems to be back on his cerebral shit. In fact, he seems to have gone right back to Inception, as his latest is another example of high-concept complexity wrapped up in the kind of mainstream bombast that has allowed Nolan a foot in both houses for so much of his career. While I’d argue, both for subjective and objective reasons, this doesn’t quite reach the same dizzying heights as Inception, I’d also argue that this film has more than enough of its own finesse to succeed.

If Inception made Nolan look like the biggest James Bond fanboy in the world, Tenet makes him look butthurt that he wasn’t tapped for No Time To Die and wanting to show everyone what they’re missing. As an action-spy caper, Nolan’s dependability with set pieces holds true here, from the opening opera house siege to the ground war finale. Teaming up once again with DOP extraordinaire Hoyte Van Hoytema (and bringing in Ludwig Göransson to do his best Han Zimmer impression), the tension and pacing are kept incredibly tight, especially once the sci-fi time twisting gets fully unleashed.

Then there’s the actors, who all are amazing in their own special ways. John David Washington is amazing as the strong, mostly-silent lead, Robert Pattinson is amazing as the suave and mischievous co-operative, and they are amazing together in a way that makes for buddy action legend. It is quite astounding just how well they work together, and after seeing Pattinson hold his own in these fight scenes, I’m looking forward to his turn as Batman more than ever. Add to that Elizabeth Debicki, who is amazing because she thankfully avoids being a passive Bond girl analogue, and Kenneth Branagh, who is amazing because playing the solipsistic Russian villain fits right in his hammy wheelhouse, and it all works very nicely.

Of course, part of that connection with Inception as far as this specific sector of Nolan’s skill set also comes with its main downside: The lack of development with the characters. Or, rather, the lack of emotionality towards those characters. Along with existing mainly as extensions of each other, rather than being fleshed-out characters in their own right, it’s also rather clear that they operate primarily to be vehicles for the bigger ideas within the script. Not that I’m exactly saying this all as a bad thing; I mean, Inception is still one of my all-time favourites, even with that deficiency in mind, and I’d argue that the character dynamics here are better than in there, so the lack of development doesn’t bother me too much.

Then there’s the main concept here, which is another case of ‘not exactly time travel, but might as well be’ with its idea of ‘inversion’, where people, objects and (potentially) the entire world move backwards in time rather than forwards. Or, in less headache-inducing terms, the difference between firing a bullet from a gun and catching a bullet in a gun. The way the story and the action scenes play around with this idea is quite enthralling, to the point where the layering of linear time and backwards time reaches an almost-Heinleinian rush in the final reel. It initially starts out primarily focused on the espionage on its own, but as inverted objects feature more and more in the film, the engagement rises along with it. It certainly gave me the same firework sensation as something like Inception or Predestination.

But with all that said, I can definitely understand some audiences not completely gelling with all this, at least on their first run. However, this is something of a unique example of a film that would benefit from a second viewing, as that assessment is due both to the film’s complexity and its incompetence. On the latter point, in contrast to how hi-def so much of the production is, the sound mixing is shockingly terrible. With how much plot and concept exposition exists in this dialogue, it’s rather baffling how much of the actors’ delivery gets buried in the mix, usually letting the decent but still obvious Zimmerisms take over. Not that it’s impossible to make the words out or anything; just that it would seriously benefit from a subtitle track and a pause button.

This is definitely one of the more flawed features Christopher Nolan has made to date, but that shouldn’t get in the way of what it genuinely gets right. While there’s more than a few production aspects that feel lesser than Nolan’s pedigree (or even in comparison to the others within this same film), the characters are fun to watch bounce off each other, the action scenes are good and tense, and the time-twisting core concept is a sturdy foundation for Nolan’s particular brand of thinking man’s action fare.