Review: Tenet

John David Washington plays ‘The Protagonist’ a CIA operative who has witnessed odd behaviour during a rescue mission at an opera house held by terrorists. Chiefly that bullets appear to be moving backwards instead of forwards. Afterwards, he is approached by a shadowy character played by Martin Donovan who gives him a secret word: Tenet. It turns out that Tenet is the name of a top-secret elite anti-terrorism unit. He has the concept of ‘reverse entropy’ explained by a scientist (a distressingly uninterested Clemency Poesy), gets partnered up with a British secret agent (Robert Pattinson), and together they uncover a sinister plot that threatens the entire world. Kenneth Branagh plays a violent Russian arms dealer, Elizabeth Debicki plays a battered wife, Aaron Taylor-Johnson thinks he’s Jason Statham, and Sir Michael Caine has a cameo as an aging British spy contact Washington meets along the way.

 

I’ve enjoyed some of the more cerebral and imaginative work of writer-director Christopher Nolan before, in fact I normally much prefer that stuff to his “Dark Knight” trilogy. His best film to date is the rather complicated but terrific “Memento”, and I found “Inception” inventive, intelligent, and intriguing too. However, if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a filmmaker who disappears up their own butt and seemingly goes out of their way to make their film as difficult to follow as possible. This 2020 film is not completely incoherent, it can be understood – with great concentration. However, Mr. Nolan (who also directed the very effective remake of “Insomnia”) has made this film as unhelpfully as he possibly can, presumably for his own egotistical amusement. Characters mumble or whisper very important dialogue (Clemence Poesy in particular is dreadfully unhelpful), or they speak too hurriedly, the dialogue audio is typically low in keeping with the irritating modern trend of only the explosions being discernible. Sound Mixing seems to have lost the plot these days, or more precisely lost the dialogue. We even get the Nolan trademark of characters speaking in masks that muffle what they’re saying. Nolan got away with it in “The Dark Knight Rises”, but it’s not like it needs to be a trademark. It pissed me off to the point where I stopped caring after a while, and given how silly some of it is, it wasn’t terribly difficult to stop caring. You’ll either go with this one or you’ll completely resist it like I did.

 

I was looking forward to another “Memento” or “Inception” with this film (I thought “Interstellar” and “Dunkirk” were relatively solid too), the trailer did a damn good job of selling you the movie without really revealing a damn thing. The experience of watching the film itself is entirely disappointing, though Nolan certainly is comfortable shooting action sequences. I think action is what he’s most concerned with here, actually. The thing is, when you don’t care about anyone or anything thing, those action sequences are ultimately for nought.

 

Aside from a surprisingly charismatic performance by Robert Pattinson (I won’t be upset if they choose him for 007 based on his work here) and the always solid Elizabeth Debicki, the cast here isn’t anything to write home about. John David Washington is just OK in the lead – he’s too mumbly as well. I think he has some of his dad’s acting talent, but perhaps not the presence and isn’t quite ready for such a big blockbuster lead role. He may well get there eventually though, there’s something there. Aaron Taylor-Johnson ruins a couple of scenes of mumbled dialogue with his attempt at playing a cockney Jason Statham manliest man who ever manned men-type character. An immediately unsubtle Kenneth Branagh is utterly ridiculous and entirely unthreatening as the film’s frankly pathetic villain. It’s his worst performance to date, and he’s had a few stinkers over the years. The character Branagh plays is motivated by immature jealousy and acts like a temper tantrum-throwing toddler. Terrifying stuff it’s absolutely not, and it’s a hoary old cliché to boot (Hint: Branagh has given a better version of the same type of performance before in certain 2014 flop). Sir Michael Caine’s cameo is completely nondescript, a waste of his time and talent.

 

The story is utter nonsense, but unlike “Inception” it’s not especially fun nonsense. Sometimes I can go along with a film that plays around with concepts like time, and sometimes I can’t. It depends on the handling of the issues and the quality of storyteller. I didn’t go along with this one at all. One of the main reasons for that is the way that Nolan has employed the concept of ‘reverse entropy’ in the film. The science fiction concepts in “Inception” seemed more integral and a seamless part of the story’s fabric. Here, Nolan throws in ‘reverse entropy’ more as a supposedly cool gimmick. It feels largely like a ‘McGuffin’ to me (or at least the concept is used in relation to the film’s McGuffin), in addition the idea of bullets moving backwards didn’t seem to be worth much fuss as far as I was concerned. At least not for this particular plot.

 

Insofar as I was able to understand this film, I didn’t care for it. As confusing as I sometimes found Nolan’s “The Prestige” it was at least watchable. Here I found myself drifting in and out of any engagement. This is a rather silly story that whilst not entirely incoherent, has been unhelpfully told to the point of keeping me at a remote distance. Nice action, a couple of solid performances, but I left the film unimpressed and slightly pissed off at the writer-director. It’s not an unreservedly awful film – I admire the ambition and directorial craftmanship to some extent – but it’s certainly a miscalculation from an egotistical, arrogant filmmaker.

 

Rating: C-