Tenet (2020) Review

“Tenet” Korean Theatrical Poster

Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, Kenneth Branagh, Clémence Poésy, Andrew Howard, Himesh Patel, Martin Donovan, Anthony Molinari
Running Time: 150 min.

By Paul Bramhall

Director and writer Christopher Nolan may be well known for his high concept blockbusters, but for me he’s also responsible for some of the most exciting action sequences Hollywood has produced in the last 15 years. From the adrenaline pumping vehicular chase in The Dark Knight, to the zero-gravity fight scene in Inception, Nolan’s insistence on filming these sequences for real rather than with a green screen means not only will they never get old, they’ll also likely never be replicated. For all the attention Nolan gets for his concepts and style of directing, it’s rarely mentioned how much he clearly understands the art of action, and his insistence on doing it right is to be admired.

After helming the 2017 historic war epic Dunkirk, in 2020 Nolan returns to familiar territory with Tenet. The last time the director did sci-fi was in 2014’s Interstellar, however Tenet most closely shares its DNA with Inception, in that it mixes high concept sci-fi with action. Only this time instead of dealing with dreams, the focus is on the theory of time inversion. What is time inversion? It turns out certain pieces of radioactive material found in the former USSR have the ability to move backwards in time, be it for a few seconds or whole years. Enough artefacts made from said material have been found in the present to indicate that, at some point in the future, a war (worse than a nuclear holocaust apparently) will wipe out humanity. It’s up to a secret organisation known only as Tenet to figure out who in the present is controlling things from the future, and save the world.

Much like Peninsula was flagged as the production to bring audiences back to the cinema in Asia (thanks to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, in case time has inverted and you’re reading this in the future), so Tenet was marketed as the western equivalent, and for this reviewer at least, it worked. Nolan’s latest certainly succeeds in being the ultimate distraction, coming with a script so filled with pseudo-scientific exposition it’d make The Matrix Reloaded blush. On the receiving end of much of this exposition is our main protagonist, who in the meta-move of 2020, is known only as The Protagonist. Played by John David Washington of BlacKkKlansman fame, as a heroic secret agent who (almost) meets a grizzly end when a mission goes wrong, he’s given a 2nd chance when recruited to a (even more) secret organisation who’s job it is to save the world.

Washington finds himself partnered with Robert Pattinson (The Batman), who steals the show whenever he’s onscreen, despite having to work with a cruel script in which the organisations secret code is the phrase “We live in a twilight world.” Pattinson makes the character work, despite often acting more as a means to dump exposition than anything else. If you’ve never heard of a temporal pincer movement, Tenet is the place to get educated, meaning some viewers will leave with an array of new vocabulary to try out in day-to-day life, or feel like their brain is melting. Washington and Pattinson make for a likeable pair, and soon they’re globe-trotting around the world attempting to piece together various clues which will lead to their target. We get a reverse bungee jump in Mumbai (an actual reverse bungee jump, nothing to do with time inversion), and a thrilling heist of a secretive storage facility in Oslo to secure a piece of art.

It’s no secret that Nolan is a huge 007 fan, no more apparent than in the On Her Majesty’s Secret Service inspired finale of Inception, and in Tenet he takes it one step further. Both Washington and Pattinson feel like Nolan’s take on the suave secret agent, and for all the talk of time inversion and imminent threat in the opening, a large part of the runtime is dedicated to the hijinks required to steal the aforementioned piece of art. In fairness it does play an important part in the plot. All indicators point to the villain of the piece being a Russian oligarch, played by Kenneth Branagh (Murder on the Orient Express), who purchased the art piece from his estranged wife, played by Elizabeth Debicki (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2). Having discovered it was a fake, Branagh uses the fact to exert total control over Debicki and their son, and Washington realises he can use Debicki to get close to him.

This is where Tenet becomes slightly unstuck. For all its action scenes and high-concept ideas, the heart of Inception was still Di Caprio’s guilt over his wife’s suicide and his role in it, which underpinned the whole narrative. Tenet lacks that same heart, with Washington missing any kind of backstory other than the fact he was a heroic secret service agent. The script attempts to inject it by creating a narrative which has Washington decide that he wants to save Debicki and her son (who we barely glance for the whole 150-minute runtime) so they can have freedom from Branagh’s control, but it doesn’t quite resonate. In part its due to the fact that, when he makes the decision, their relationship hasn’t developed enough to believably justify it, and the other aspect is that Washington and Debicki lack any real chemistry together.

Combine this with the initial menacing presence that Branagh projects soon falling into one dimensional 007-esque style villainism, and ultimately any emotional connection that Tenet was aiming to achieve sadly falls by the wayside. Despite Nolan missing the mark on the more human side of the story, we know that any concept as out there as inverting time within the context of an action movie must at least deliver some thrills and spills. Thankfully it does, with the action sequences arguably being Tenet’s biggest strength by a county mile. The aforementioned heist on the storage facility takes place within an airport, and involves crashing a grounded plane into a hangar as a distraction technique. While the scene was originally intended to be shot using miniatures, it turned out to be cheaper to purchase an unused passenger plane, and crash it for real. I’ll simply say that it was worth it, as it’s an amazing scene.

A multi-vehicle car chase is arguably the most bombastic highlight, which involves some of the vehicles being inverted, creating the most unique vehicular chase since the highway scene in The Matrix Reloaded (probably the first time I’ve dissed and complimented a movie in the same review). Scenes like this are the type that restore your faith in there still being visionary directors working in Hollywood, capable of creating one of a kind action sequences that we’ve never seen before in 2020. The most mind-boggling action scene though is on a smaller scale, but no less impactful, when Washington goes one-on-one with a masked attacker who’s inverted, resulting in one of the most visually gripping fight scenes I’ve witnessed, and providing Tenet with its equivalent of Inception’s zero-gravity brawl.

The military themed finale feels somewhat like it comes out of nowhere, however it’s so gratuitously grand and ambitious that it doesn’t become hard to forgive. Featuring a mix of both real time and inverted forces battling it out in the same landscape, it’s a sight to behold, as a number of ingenious small plot-arcs take place within the same scene. Regardless of your opinion of Nolan as a filmmaker, scenes like this make it impossible to deny that he’s committed to his craft, and willing to push the boundaries of what can be done in cinema as a visual medium. Ironically, with the number of bullets and explosions that fill the screen during this sequence, the most wince worthy moment of the whole movie comes via a quieter scene that plays out in parallel with Branagh and Debicki (you’ll know it when you see it).

Tenet crams a lot into its sprawling runtime. Imagine a move which combines the entire mythology of The Terminator franchise, the principles of Timecop, with a sprinkling of Edge of Tomorrow, then adds its own layer on top of them, and you’ll have some idea of what to expect. Technically amazing, and containing some of the best action sequences of the decade (yes, I’m putting it out there, they’ll still stand up when we look back in 2029), there’s a lot to enjoy in Nolan’s latest epic. It’s just a shame that there’s a lack of emotional depth to the characters and their relationships that was so prominent in Nolan’s earlier work. Still, as an action spectacle that proves the genre should look forward for innovation rather than backwards for inspiration, Tenet doesn’t put a foot wrong. If you’re tired of seeing the latest superhero save the world, then Nolan’s latest comes as a strongly recommended alternative.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10