Photo Credit: Wikipedia
Tenet is director Chirstopher Nolan’s latest action/thriller movie. Released on September 3rd, it has audiences shaking their heads in admiration and confusion. Making $207 million in the box office worldwide, its opening weekend hasn’t beaten Nolan’s 2010 movie “Inception” (2010) which made $833.6 million.
The plot is fairly simple: prevent World War Three, but the way of doing that makes the movie insanely convoluted. The main character, The Protagonist, teams up with an peculiar partner named Neil and they work together through space and time to stop an evil arms dealer named Andrei from destroying the world. This happens alongside a very undeveloped subplot of Andrei’s wife, Kat, trying to get away from her abusive husband blackmailing her to be away from her son.
The movie itself isn’t bad, but it’s not especially good either. Nolan tries to make a spy movie mixed with time travel- or what the movie calls “inversion” but severely lacks making the characters have depth in the process. The flashiness of “inversion” is beat when the movie pacing is going so fast and the dialogue is almost unhearable because of the loud bass. The technical aspects of the film however are great, the cinematography and soundtrack by Ludwig Göransson are worth noting.
Nolan’s idea of using time in his past movies like “Dunkirk” (2017) or “Inception” (2010) work because the viewer can watch without any prior knowledge of the film and understand what’s happening. With “Tenet” you’ll regret not taking that physics class in high school and lose interest when it gets hurriedly explained to you. Also in his other movies you have more of a personal stake in the characters’ lives, why you want them to succeed. But here you don’t really have that bond. The Protagonist is a cliche hero willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good.
The cast and acting is the only thing that saves the flimsy movie. John Davis Washington, also seen in “BlacKkKansman” (2018), is phenomenal as the main character “the Protagonist”. And Robert Pattinson is still on the up and up from starring in “The Lighthouse” (2019).
With Nolan being a big vocal supporter of the moviegoing experience he hasn’t allowed a digital release alongside the theatrical one. But with audiences still scared to go out to the movies attendance numbers are drastically down. And for New Yorkers, such as myself, if you’d like to see the movie you will have to travel to New Jersey or Connecticut, something the average movie going wouldn’t do, especially in Covid times.
