9/1/20 - Tenet (2020) - 6+/7-/10

Whether you are Nolan fan or not, you cannot deny that he makes truly cinematic features that don’t dumb down the detonations. They are big, bold, and bewildering. Tenet pulls no punches and delivers the excitement & intrigue in equal parts with perplexing & piling on. Now, whether that works for everyone I cannot say, but even if I did not love it, I cannot deny the sheer magnitude, will, and craft on display in Nolan’s latest mega movie.

Tenet struggled in two key areas: pathos and entanglement. In a way, Tenet is the opposite of Interstellar. Two immense and complex fuzzy science fiction epics, but where one is hellbent on instilling emotion to the point of being sappy, the other fails to truly engage on a personal empathetic level, coming off a bit frigid. Tenet feels like a high class thrilling espionage entanglement, but without anyone who the audience really cares about or gets behind. 

Similarly, Tenet doubles down on the Prestige, Inception and Interstellar by adding the ultimate confusion: time travel. It is inventive, but like all pervasive timey-wimey adventures, it collapses on its own weight. Its rules are more guidelines, and with the speeding good looking sports car that Tenet is, it weaves in and out of lanes, over boundaries, and even driving backwards in opposing traffic. It is mostly fun  and elegant, but as its structure builds, it wobbles and topples due to its hurdy gurdy beams overlapping. It doesn’t help that the stakes feel removed when the story & the protagonist are fated to the finale. I wonder how it ends but I didn't worry about it not ending the best for all involved.

Spectacle and the temporal titillation weren’t the only stars. Washington was rock solid as the badass “Time Impossible” agent. Hopefully everyone can now recognize the glory that is Elizabeth Debicki, She is tremendous, despite the icy suppressed opportunity she is afforded. But the real shining spot is Pattinson, who smoothly exudes charismatic cool and felt pretty adept with the action. 

Whether it clicks or not for you, the film-making wizardry on display is paramount. The mixture of action that flows both forward and backward within the same set-pieces is a marvel. Like a 2.5 hour Inception rotating hallway fight, and despite how numbing that might appear, it consistently awes. Its just so sharp and effective. Now, you may not understand the exact interplay of the elements, but it is still something to behold.

The plot is windey, but not impenetrable.In fact, many of the turns are telegraphed. It is certainly a “rule of cool” feature, but cool it is. Unique, expensive and audacious, it simply lacks that human element within the slimy mess of the temporal tumult. Good, but not quite great.