Tenet (2020)

Tenet (2020)

7/10

Starring

John David Washington

Robert Pattinson

Elizabeth Debicki

Dimple Kapadia

Directed by Christoper Nolan

Christopher Nolan has a knack for creating movies that feel like puzzles—designed for film lovers to piece together and debate long after the credits roll. Tenet is like a drug for fans of mind-bending movie thrills. Despite its complex plot, the film keeps your attention for its long runtime and delivers a thrilling, action-packed experience. It’s an action-thriller with a heavy dose of time-travel sci-fi sprinkled throughout. If you’ve seen Memento (2000) or Inception (2010) (both also directed and written by Nolan), you’ll recognize his signature style here. Nolan didn’t hold anything back in this production, though I have to say the sound mixing left a lot to be desired.

From the very beginning, when I saw someone "unshoot" a bullet, I couldn’t help but think this story might have worked better as a TV series. A series format would have given more time to explore the plot in greater depth and deliver more juicy details.

The story follows a CIA operative, who we’ll just call "our man." After witnessing the unshooting of bullets, he’s captured and seemingly kills himself to avoid revealing secrets. However, he survives and is recruited into a secret organization called Tenet. There, he learns about bullets with “inverted entropy,” which allows them to move backward through time.

Our man is tasked with finding the source of these inverted bullets. He soon discovers that the bullets are just regular ones transformed by a machine that alters their entropy. From there, things get even more complicated, diving into a mix of time travel, intricate details, and fast-paced action that demands your full attention.

Even with its two-hour-and-thirty-minute runtime, the movie feels packed to the brim with a complex plot and too many details to fully absorb in one sitting. This is why I think Tenet might have worked better as a series—allowing Nolan more time to build his world and gently flesh out the events unfolding on screen.

The movie’s production cost was a whopping $200 million, and with marketing expenses factored in, it’s been labeled a box office bomb, projected to lose over $100 million. That’s unfortunate because the movie is well-made and deserved to be a bigger hit.

Acting-wise, John David Washington (Denzel Washington’s son) delivers an amazing performance, showing promise of living up to his father’s legacy. The rest of the cast, including Robert Pattinson and Michael Caine, also give stellar performances. Although Caine’s role is brief, his presence feels like a familiar hallmark of Nolan’s films.

Watching this movie in a cinema might have been a challenge, as even watching at home required me to rewind multiple times to keep up. Despite that, Tenet earns its place on the shelf of wonderful Nolan movies, even if it’s one of his most challenging works to follow.