Worth: $9.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Kenneth Brannagh, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Aaron Taylor-Johnson
Intro:
Overlong, noisy, full of poe-faced delivery of portentous (and pretentious) dialogue, needlessly convoluted plot threads, an unearned sense of gravitas that verges on the unintentionally hilarious and a script that isn’t even vaguely as clever as it seems to think it is.
It’s widely known that director Christopher Nolan wanted Tenet, his latest slick spectacle flick, to play widely across the world, essentially reopening cinemas and injecting some much needed life back into the film industry. Thanks to certain countries’ incompotent management of the whole global pandemic fuckery, it hasn’t quite worked out that way, but Australia, at least, can have a squiz at the beloved director’s newy. The question, though, has to be: is it worth risking the (admittedly statistically small) chance of copping COVID-19? The answer, sadly, is “no” followed by a disappointed “oof” and then softer, “it really, really isn’t.”
Tenet tells the story of [sigh] “The Protagonist” (John David Washington) who finds himself embroiled in a convoluted conspiracy that we won’t spoil, but it involves spy stuff, time travel and World War III, and yet is nowhere near as interesting as that might suggest. Along the way, Protag meets up with Neil (Robert Pattinson), who appears to be a mysterious ally, and nefarious Russian arms dealer Andrei Sator (Kenneth Brannagh), whose accent frequently verges on the incomprehensible. Rounding out the cast is a ludicrously underused Elizabeth Debicki as Sator’s wife, Kat, whose entire character consists of saying “I have a son!” sporadically, in lieu of an actual personality or internal life. Cameos by the likes of Michael Caine and Martin Donovan also feature and are swiftly forgotten.
Christopher Nolan’s very self-important and bombastic style has often been mocked by lazy critics and dubious cinemagoers alike, but when he’s on point the bloke can direct the shit out of a movie. Inception, The Dark Knight and Dunkirk alone are all spectacular examples of what Nolan can do when he’s firing on all cylinders. Hell, even some of his lesser efforts like Interstellar and The Dark Knight Rises have enough spectacular set pieces in the case of the former, or a memorable villain in the latter. Tenet, however, is everything Nolan’s critics have been accusing him of. Overlong, noisy, full of poe-faced delivery of portentous (and pretentious) dialogue, needlessly convoluted plot threads, an unearned sense of gravitas that verges on the unintentionally hilarious and a script that isn’t even vaguely as clever as it seems to think it is.
On the slender plus side, the action is spectacular as always, and the whole reversal of physics, time-flowing-backwards thing is a neat trick, the first couple of times at least. The problem is that everything around these moments – the characters, the story, the leaden exposition dumps – are just so lacking. The Protagonist barely registers as a character, despite Washington’s considerable charisma, and it’s hard to get caught up in his adventure when the stakes feel low, despite the endless reams of dialogue about the end of the world and “temporal pincer movements”.
Look, the world’s a shitfight right now and a big, bold, expansive and escapist blockbuster would have been just the ticket. Sadly, while Tenet certainly feels like a pretty puzzle typical of Nolan’s oeuvre, it’s more likely to be one you’re too underwhelmed to bother solving. Fire, floods, global plague and now Christopher Nolan’s worst movie: 2020 delivers another swift kick to the goolies and a cinema experience only extreme Nolan fans are going to love.
Small minds will always hate the bold and daring
Smaller ones enjoy Tenet.
Small minds are told something is good by publicity machines.
Small minds argue the rhetoric of the advertiser.
Small minds confuse dislike with misunderstanding
Small minds belittle
Just say , you didn’t get it . I saw it and it’s a great film period.
Just seen it. Have to agree (unfortunately). I love some his other movies (particularly The Dark Knight, Inception and Memento), but I found this article as a result of typing “Tenet pretentious” into Google. A real let down.
Prepare to get slammed
You just didn’t get it. Small minds
It’s a small mind that thinks it’s somehow smart or clever to abuse people who disagree with them. Probably an intolerant, even bigoted, mind also.
I saw it last night at a drive-in. After the first hour I kept looking at the clock. I wished I could reverse time back to the decision to spend money. It was an overblown excuse for blue screen overkill. The story was convoluted and lazy, full of itself. The plot depended on people and explosions running backwards. At one point someone explained that when time was reversed, the second law of thermodynamics required that heat would be cancelled by ice and cold. That set up one scene where a car is set on fire and the protagonist is frozen. This lazy movie didn’t bother to explain why heat in guns, car engines, and other types of heat sources didn’t result in ice forming. The acting was pretty standard for a Nolan epic. In other words, the actors were required to be one dimensional bystanders for the epic save the world set scenes, mostly involving “the clock is ticking’. Kenneth Branagh is a great actor, but you wouldn’t know it as he delivered his villainous lines in a fake Russian monotone. I knew what to expect after Interstellar. Tenet is better, but that isn’t saying much, or that you should lose actual time going forward on another excuse for science fiction.
This review nails it.
After many failed and increasingly desperate attempts to reconnect with the muse that inspired Memento, Nolan has finally disappeared up his own fundament.
Needlessly convoluted plot threads? Sounds like my cup of tea.
(Except I don’t drink much tea. It’s my cup of coffee then.
Tenet takes the convolutions that made Inception a really interesting film, ramps them up and turns it into a gimmick trying to hide the lack of plot or tension or anything worthwhile. Washington is wooden, Brannagh almost incomprehensible Best summed up by the conversation overheard on the way out of the theatre: “What the f..k was that about”; “Who cares.”
He hasn’t made a decent film since The Prestige