The weakest film in Chris Nolan’s otherwise distinguished career, Tenet is a middling sci-fi actioner, written and directed by him, and produced by his wife, Emma Thomas.
Grade: B- (** 1/2* out of *****)
It stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, and regular British collaborators Michael Caine and Kenneth Branagh (betyter known as a director).
Nolan’s last film to be released by Warner, Tenet follows a CIA officer who is recruited into a secret organization, tasked with tracing the origin of objects that are traveling backward through time and their connection to an attack by the future. In other words, the (impossibe?) mission is to prevent the breakout of WWIII.
Premise
On “the 14th,” the (nameless) Protagonist (Washington) leads a covert CIA extraction during a staged terrorist siege at an Opera House in Kyiv. He is saved from KORD forces by a masked operative whose bag has an orange trinket.
The Protagonist retrieves an artifact but his team is captured and tortured. He swallows a suicide pill but wakes up to find it was fake—a test that only he passed.
He is then recruited by “Tenet,” a secret organization that informs him on objects with “inverted” entropy that move backward through time.
With his handler Neil, he traces inverted munitions to Priya Singh, an arms dealer in Mumbai.
Most of the characters are one-dimentionally flat, inhabiting a narrative that’s more confusin than twisty, thus preventing viewers from any thematic or emotioanl involvment.
Nolan took over five years to write the screenplay after deliberating about Tenet‘s central ideas for more than a decade. But the results of this long jourmey are dubious, to say the least.
Pre-production began in late 2018, casting took place in March 2019, and principal photography lasted six months in multiple countries.
After delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Tenet was released in the UK on August 26, 2020, and in the US on Sept 3.
It is the only commercially disappointing picture in Nolan’s oeuvre. The first Hollywood tent-pole to open in theaters during the pandemic, it grossed $366 million worldwide on a $205 million budget.
The film received favorable nut not exciting reviews, dividing critics more than Nolan’s previous works.
Fortunately, Nolan’s next effort, Oppenheimer, would be a superp biopic of the controversial scientist, and winner of many critical accolades, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor (Cillian Murphy) Oscars
Oscar Context:
Tenet won Best Visual Effects Oscar.
