Film Review: Tenet

After a relentless press campaign and being delayed three times, Christopher Nolan’s new movie Tenet quickly established large-scale expectations to live up to. From the first trailer, Nolan signalled the film’s radical new direction, and the cast promised it was unlike anything audiences had ever seen before. Made by a big screen purist, it’s fitting that Nolan’s 151-minute blockbuster is the first truly big release to break free of the Hollywood Lockdown. 

Tenet is an intense, mind-bending time travel thriller. Leaping around the world, the story progresses at a breakneck pace, injecting as many steroids into a James Bond-esque doomsday plot as possible. John David Washington is ‘the Protagonist’ (Yes, that’s his character’s name), an ex-CIA agent who has been enlisted into an agency from the future. Fighting an unknown nuclear threat, the Protagonist’s story weaves through time, closing in on the secret dealings of Russian Oligarch, Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh).  

Further explanation of Tenet’s plot would be difficult, there’s a plethora of time travel, destruction, and at least an hour of expository dialogue. The Protagonist teams up with Neil (Robert Pattinson), a mysterious scientist? Secret service agent? Soldier? who delivers Christopher Hitchens-like monologues detailing the plot. Together, they seek to protect the world and Sator’s wife, Kat (Elizabeth Debicki). 

The characters and story are probably the weakest parts of Tenet. One-note and devoid of emotional depth, many characters bleat out their feelings and concerns, trying to force their relationships through dialogue. Even Robert Pattinson, oozing with charisma (and the best actor in the film), felt like a tool to deliver exposition or foreshadow the next big set-piece. John David Washington’s performance shines in the terrific action sequences, as he enacts stunts both forward and in reverse. However, the film fails to build convincing relationships between him and his co-stars. The Protagonist is no James Bond; he’s not hot-headed or witty, nor is there much charm to his interactions; I couldn’t tell you a single detail about him other than that he drinks diet coke and is an ex-CIA agent. Kenneth Branagh’s Sator is a striking mobster, and if he was given stronger dialogue and motivations, he could have crafted a chilling performance. While Debicki delivers with conviction and attempts to bring pathos to Nolan’s script, her character hardly evolves past being worried for her son or fearful of her husband. The short screen time allocated to the rest of the supporting cast; Michael Caine, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Himesh Patel, and Dimple Kapadia mean it’s hard to truly evaluate their performances or significance to the plot. In the brief moments where characters do open up to the audience, their scenes are choked out by the score. 

Clearly, Tenet struggles with nuance. There is a good guy and a bad guy, a right, a wrong, and a moral world to save. Branagh states the future needs to destroy the past to save itself from climate change, however, the line is treated more as a throwaway than a thesis. The Protagonist exists to save the world because it’s the world and Nolan never debates if it’s a world worth saving or the effects of saving it. At two-and-a-half hours, the film feels like it easily could have used another half an hour to grow, breath, and develop. Any stakes lack weight, with even one character’s fatal choice feeling procedural rather than emotive. The overarching plot isn’t hard to grasp, but it’s easy to get confused and caught up in the finer details.

Where the film shines is in the visual department. Nolan leaps from set piece to set piece, flexing his technical craft and ginormous budget. Whether it’s crashing a real airliner on the runway, or a car chase that unfolds in two directions of time, the film features multiple sequences that are jaw-dropping to watch. Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytemer’s vivid imagery highlights why Nolan is considered one of the best directors alive. Similarly, the constant, braided nature of time travel is stunning to watch. Characters choose to reverse against the world around them or have to deal with antagonists doing the same. There’s something fascinating about watching ships retract through the sea or bullets fly back into chambers. Buildings rebuild from the rubble before exploding again, and certain stunts take multiple viewings to comprehend. Tenet is at its strongest when dropping visual bombshells and building a foreboding sense of what comes next. These moments are what help to keep the film fresh on a rewatch. Nolan keeps you on the edge of your seat, waiting for the next fight sequence or trying to comprehend who, what, when, and where. The constant intensity is aided by Ludwig Göransson’s powerful soundtrack, packed full of synths and strings.

If cinema was purely an artform of visuals, Nolan would have hit it out of the park. Tenet wants to be a magnum opus and – on paper – it should be. However, the breakneck pacing results in the characters and story struggling to keep up. That’s not to say it’s not enjoyable, Tenet remains very watchable and an incredible visual experience. It’s worth catching on the big screen purely just to see how many different ways $200 million can be spent. Tenet still strides ahead of most other action blockbusters, Nolan just took ‘Go Hard or Go Home’ to heart.