NOLAN'S TENET IS AN INVOLUTE "BELIEF"
"Hasn't happened yet". Yeah it has. 2020's Tenet has finally hit movie theaters. Time to 'Mask Up', keep six feet, and avoid sitting next to seat-filling strangers.
So OK, you got a wooden John David Washington (Denzel's son) in the lead. You got miscued sound editing that's only hindered by a bludgeoning soundtrack. You got a 150-minute running time that flows at a somewhat decent clip. Finally, you got the obligatory Michael Caine cameo that always plays opposite the main persona. Yeah Tenet is the flick that director Christopher Nolan was probably born to make. The question is, were we born to see it?
Anyway, Tenet is an out of the box, scrambled spy thriller that might require multiple viewings. And that's even if you didn't enjoy it. Nolan working from his own clunky script, fashions his altered version of Back to the Future Part II except that everyone is occasionally walking and talking backwards.
Action-packed yet overly mysterious and lacking in character background within the first hour, Tenet is Nolan at his most ambitious and/or most opaque. Too bad his storytelling sensibilities can't coincide with well, his stark ambition.
As something about a secret agent who has to steal a case of plutonium which would adhere to the start of World War III, Tenet is an enigma wrapped inside a coffer wrapped inside a gimmickry bubble. The film is a human Zapruder because you have to rewind scenes in your head just to figure out what the heck is going on (hence the multiple viewings).
Christopher Nolan as a helmer, isn't in the business of entertaining you. He wants to educate you, like an MIT professor who's bent on getting a darn Field's Medal. It's his world, his rules, and we're just sitting in the middle while sucking on it for $10 bucks a pop. I'm going with a rating of 2 and a half stars until I see Tenet again, "tentatively".
Written by Jesse Burleson
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