Tenet [Contains spoilers]

[Neville]

Plot: In the near future, an American spy (John David Washington) is informed of a bizarre conspiration: Someone in the future is sending back in time "altered" objects that behave exactly the oposite of their present-day equivalents, such as bullets that return to the gun once "unfired". With the help of Neil (Robert Pattinson), he is able to trace the objects to a Russian arms dealer (Kenneth Branagh) and his wife.

Comments: I really didn't know wether to post this on the bad or the good movies board. Let's say that although I didn't enjoy the movie I can't help but notice that it is a technically well made film, and I'm also pretty sure some people are going to defend it passionately.

Let me start saying that I usually enjoy Nolan's films. And I even adore a few of them, such as "Memento" or "The Prestige". But never until "Tenet" I've noticed how tired I'm starting to feel about his non-linear experiments and his chaotic action scenes.

It certainly doesn't help that this time his movie is more "naked" than usual. Every single frame seems shot with the desire of removing any indesirable details. I admit that this approach sometimes helps a movie -Paul Schrader seems very adept of this same principle- but in a blockbuster like this one it only serves to accentuate how simple -despite Nolan's efforts to complicate it- and insipid everything is.

And unfortunately, this visual anorexia also extends to other areas of the film. Character development is almost nonexistant -John David Washington's character is named "The protagonist" in the credits- and other characters seem lifted directly from their previous films, such as Kenneth Branagh's (from "Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit") or Elizabeth Debicki's (this time from "The Night Manager").

And what's worse, too many events seem to occur at random. What's exactly the relevance of the interrogation John David Washington suffers after the action prologue? Be my guest. Why does he seems so concerned with Elizabeth Debicki's character wellbeing? Because the script says so. Only Robert Pattinson manages to stand out, making a character that's only there to provide information or save the protagonist's ass from time to time quite sympathetic.

And what about the dialogue? Full of air, I'd say. At first glance, the characters seem to engage in deeply philosophycal -or just plain hip- interchanges. However, their content has exactly zero calories. I'd dare say most of the time twey could be replaced with white noise without affecting the scene much.

Fans of time-travelling films and their paradoxes may find here some sustenance, but also beware: for all its pretended originality, "Tenet" doesn't avoid certain clichés of the genre, such as characters meeting their future / past selves.

So, is it a piece of crap? It certainly felt that way to me. But at the same time I can't feel any personal animosity towards Nolan. He's delivered exactly what we have been demanding from him for years, a non-linear blockbuster with a twist of lemon, enough to please the crowds and at the same time make them feel intelligent for managing to follow the plot. Wether this is a misstep or an indication that Nolan is about to follow the path of th likes of M. Night Shyamalan, J. J. Abrams or Chris Carter (this is, the discarted toys drawer), time will tell.

Unless "Tenet" is precisely a warning from the future, naturally

[Rev. Powell]

Pretty much my take. It was just on the good side of "meh." I liked the globetrotting MISSION IMPOSSIBLE type elements, and it made me think Nolan could make a very good straight spy movie if he wanted to. But the sci-fi premise didn't work for me. Seemed full of holes. I gave it 3/5.

[Neville]

The sad thing is that the central concept (the future being at war with us) is pretty cool. But they barely bothered to develop it.

[BoyScoutKevin]

A film that earned less than half of what it would have earned, if there had been no pandemic that closed many of the movie theaters in the U.S. Still, it earned in the low 9 figures overseas, so Hollywood considers this to be a successful release, despite the pandemic. Which always makes me wonder, if it is a success, will there be a sequel?

[Neville]

Nolan doesn't do sequels (yet), but expect a new Nolan film in a year or two.

[Alex]

Didn't he do 3 Batman movies?

[Neville]

Oh, yes. Silly me.

[Archivist]

Just saw it in the cinema, in the first time I've seen a movie at the theatre for many, many months. Maybe even over a year!

For the very first time, I was actively puzzled in a Christopher Nolan movie. Yeah, I saw/deduced a number of things before they were mentioned, like the broken side mirror on the BMW, Pattinson's reaction to taking the helmet off the masked soldier, which was later confirmed by the Protagonist's arm injury later in the film. But there were a few moments which escaped me until a few moments later, like when TP asks Branagh if he likes opera, and trying to figure out how the temporal pincer movement worked in the final battle.

But I was floored when I realized how TP's reverse time journey played out in the second Freeport scene later in the film, it was like a Shyamalan twist in slow motion. There was so much going on in this film that I think the background detail anorexia that @Neville mentioned helped. Because of all the scene and location changes, this lack of background detail helped focus on the story - more background detail would have been distracting.

I loved the performances from all the cast, especially Elizabeth Debicki. I haven't seen her in anything else, and she played the English rose so well that I was surprised to later learn she is French Australian. I also liked how the characters' lines often instructed the audience how to think of the plot. They were directly telling other characters, and the audience, to stop thinking in linear time and go with this twisty Moebius strip of a roller coaster.

Nolan's movies always give me a sense of 'anything is possible' when it comes to film making, and Tenet is no exception. The fact that a major studio bankrolled this deeply convoluted story, pushed to the limit in terms of practical effects and extras casting and shot on location in multiple countries, is just one example of its enormity of scope. When I saw Inception, I felt like the world was opening up to me. At the end of the Batman trilogy, I felt like anything was possible. With Tenet, I left with a sense that the world is more puzzling than I thought, and that I needed to think much more deeply about the nature of time, predestination and free will.