Christopher Nolan is one of the most fascinating directors alive today. When you watch one of his movies you walk away dazzled and in some cases discussing with yourself what it was he was trying to say in each film. That’s the genius of his work. I remember the first time I saw his second feature MEMENTO how much I loved the film and wanted to go back and watch it again. His BATMAN trilogy is perhaps the best telling of that story to date. INCEPTION was a mind bender. DUNKIRK was stellar. And now he presents TENET.
TENET takes place in a science fiction world where we are introduced to a CIA agent known as the Protagonist (John David Washington). The opening segment involves an attack on an opera house where he leads a team trying to take out a team of terrorist who have taken it over and the people inside as hostages. During the battle a mysterious soldier “un-fires” a bullet intended for him leaving him spellbound. Captured by mercenaries he is taken in for an interrogation, swallows a cyanide pill and wakes to discover he has passed a test.
He is now part of a top secret group known as Tenet. This organization has a group of scientists working to discover where a new weapon has come from, a bullet with an inverted entropy that allows it to travel back through time itself. Their belief is that the bullets are being made in the future and sent back in time. They want him to find out where they are coming from.
Aided by another agent named Neil (Robert Pattinson), the pair track down a shipment of the bullets to Priya Singh (Dimple Kapadia). It turns out she too is part of Tenet and she purchased the bullets from a Russian arms dealer named Sator (Kenneth Branaugh). Learning that Sator is keeping his wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) on hand via blackmail, the Protagonist approaches her to help him gain access to Sator.
She does so and he takes on a job for Sator. But crosses and double crosses pop in and out of the mix here and it isn’t long before the Protagonist isn’t quite sure who he can and can’t trust. The further down the spiral he goes the more he learns about the whole ability to travel in time. Locations that provide the means to do so, rules in place that must be followed and more find him going from place to place, time to time, to try and defeat the bad guy and his hoped for end result, the destruction of the world itself.
As with INCEPTION Nolan has created an alternate world in which our characters are allowed to play. This is not some location that an innocent bystander will accidentally step into. It is a world where agents of both sides are trying to work towards a goal, one negative and one positive, and are willing to do anything to see that their side wins. That Nolan could take a story filled with so much to understand and have explained to us and get us involved in that tale is a work of art.
There is a ton of action that unfolds here. As I watched the film it made me think of the classic Bond films we all grew up with. Perhaps updated to a different time with the whole concept of time travel included. But that level of action and set design here are comparable and it works well.
This is the first film I have seen Washington in and he does a great job here both in his acting and action skills. While many talked of Idris Elba taking on the role of James Bond, Washington feels like he’s already done that with this film. Perhaps minus the romancing of an appropriately named femme fatale. Branaugh comes prepared here turning in yet another solid performance. Debicki turns in a nice performance as well and deserves credit for it. And Pattinson proves he has more to offer than being a vampire for the rest of his life. He does a good job in his part here.
Some will find it difficult to follow this film and
fortunately that works well with it on disc. It allows you to pause the movie
to discuss with the rest of those watching with you exactly what is going on.
Or you can back it up and decipher it. In any event the movie is entertaining
and thought provoking at the same time. For me that makes this one worth
watching more than once.
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