Tenet Movie Review

Tenet (2020)

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Written by: Christopher Nolan
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Starring: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Kenneth Branagh, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Michael Caine
Rated: PG-13
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Plot
A secret agent manipulates the flow of time to prevent the destruction of the entire world.

Verdict
This isn't a movie that relies on story and character development, the focus is the concept and execution interspersed with action. I didn't think a time travel movie could talk about the grandfather paradox and put a new spin on it, but Tenet does just that. It's tricky to see the flow of time from opposite vantage points, and that's what makes the concept feel complicated. We need to see time in new manner. This movie is quite a ride and the plot and action take the idea of time flow and build on it.
Watch it.

Review
The Sator Square plays a prominent role in the movie. All five words in the square are used in the movie for the title, characters, and other nouns.  Each name can be read on the square up, down, left, or right. It's a nod to the perspective in the movie.

John David Washington plays the Progtagonist.

Starting with a covert operation, the Protagonist (John David Washington) must extract a strange artifact. This movie doesn't give us any details, but we know that he isn't Ukraine police as his uniform suggest.

The Protagonist, and this is the only name he has in the movie, is recruited into a secret organization. The code word is Tenet. He's told the word will open a lot of doors, but some "wrong ones too." This is where we encounter inverted objects. These objects are made in the future and sent back. The Protagonist must track down the supplier of inverted bullets. You don't shoot inverted bullets, you catch them. It's a neat trick. The Protagonist must track down an arms dealer so that he can prevent the end of the world.

This movie is nearly all action. This is a heist movie with a big twist, time can flow both ways. There's a fight scene early in the movie with an inverted person. A fight scene looks similar forward or backward, but it's a neat gimmick. Half way into the movie I was surprised there weren't more reverse action sequences, but I'm glad the movie doesn't over indulge.

The movie presents a neat time travel concept that is wholly dependent on point of view. The flow of time is relative to who we're watching. Someone in the normal flow of time sees an inverted person as backwards, but an inverted person sees everyone else as backwards. A car chase sequence brings this together as it shows us both beginnings and ends. Based on perspective the chase scene is either a beginning or end. Both are true at the same time. This isn't time travel as usually depicted, and you'll want to watch this again just to find the seams. While there are a few aspects to pick apart, the movie does a really nice job of preventing any gaping plot contradictions.

The plot isn't difficult to follow, the difficult part is understanding you're watching scenes play forward and backward. Tenet is worth seeing for the sheer creativity of the plot and the execution. The script flips on itself, driving home the importance of perspective. The movie manages to include common time travel tropes, but it feels fresh. There are movies where the strength is the story and characters, then there is a movie like that that is so creative that it purposely avoids developing the characters and story to focus on concept. This movie doesn't want to illicit emotion, it wants you to focus on action and concept. That makes it cold because the plot is present mainly to get us to the next action sequence, but I appreciate the movie's commitment to focus almost completely on the concept.

I read a lot of complaints about incomprehensible audio. I didn't have that issue, but I watched the movie with headphones which provide a better range than television of theater speakers. Nolan's movies generally seem to be mixed with dialog that's difficult to decipher.

Spoilers

This is a movie that seems more difficult to understand than it is. The flow of time in relation to people inverting themselves is easy enough to grasp. It's just difficult to separate scenes flowing in different directions simultaneously.

The concept gets tricky when we look at one of the first scenes when the protagonist catches a bullet with a gun. How did the bullet get in the wall? It had to be fired, but we never see that happen. Based on the movie's logic, it would have to be fired earlier than when the Protagonist caught it. The bullet can't act independently. There's no way to reconcile how this happens, but it sure makes for a cool scene.

Neil, the Protagonist's ally through the movie come the closest to getting a story, but we don't realize his plight until the end and then it feels like an afterthought. There's no build up to it. The movie throws it out there, and it's up to the viewer to realize the implications, though the movie makes it easy to piece it together. I don't have an issue with the movie's narrative, it's just a different way to put together a movie, ignoring emotional buildup and character development. That's usually what draws you in, but this movie doesn't want to take away from the concept.

Neil states he was recruited by the Protagonist a few years ago. That would mean the Protagonist would have to invert himself and travel years into the past to recruit Neil. Everything we've seen in the movie indicates there is no way to skip time. To travel two years into the past, the Protagonist would have to live inverted for two years. That's a lot of preparation, but I don't want to nitpick the movie. Time travel can make it easy to do just that.