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Movie Review: Tenet

Mike Tyrkus

Even though it may be the most anticipated theatrical opening of the past year, especially given that we are ourselves caught in a bewildering pandemic reality wherein each one of us we may tend to question what exactly is reality these days, the fact that writer/director Christopher Nolan’s long-awaited Tenet is both equally remarkable and utterly confounding, yet somehow entirely forgettable, makes it one of the most mesmerizing entries of Nolan’s career.

The epic film, and it is easily so no matter how you ultimately fell about it, follows a main character known only as the Protagonist (played with almost effortless panache by the remarkable John David Washington) who, armed with only the word, “Tenet,” becomes embattled in a conflict that apparently could determine the fate of the entire world. It appears that the ability to bend time has been developed in the future and that technology has subsequently been sent back into the past to garner knowledge and secrets to prevent certain events from occurring. It all ultimately plays sort of like a maniacal, evil version of Quantum Leap.

Succinctly put, this is heady material and not for those looking to check out and enjoy a mindless action film for a few hours. Nolan expects you to put your time in here and that expectation is evident from the beginning as he spends well over half of the film essentially setting the final effects-laden act up. Most of this is done through the introduction of a myriad of characters. All of whom feel as though they could have been lifted from any number of spy thrillers. In addition to Washington’s heroic Protagonist, there is also a maniacal madman named Andrei Sator, who hell-bent on bringing about the end of the world, on his own psychotic terms of course, played by Kenneth Branagh with an unbridled enthusiasm he hasn’t displayed this brazenly since his bizarre turn in Wild Wild West (1999). Then there is Sator’s wife, the oft-ignored and mistreated Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), who will, of course, end up helping the hero upend her husband’s nefarious plans. Finally, the Protagonist is given a partner in crime, fellow time-jumping agent Neil (Robert Pattinson), to aid in his heroic struggle.

John David Washington in “Tenet.”

Once all of the players are introduced there are few dazzling action sequences and then the “time-jumping” concept is implemented and the whole thing gets trippy, or absolutely brilliant, depending on your point of view at this point. The action is kinetic and the never lets you catch your breath. The players all do a superlative job allowing the world they exist in explain itself as it moves along (that is, there isn’t a stretch of extraneous explanation to set the bedrock for the time-jumping tricks). That is there, but it’s not as terrible as it could have been.

Ultimately though, there is just something hollow and uninteresting about Tenet that is profoundly disappointing as it is so breathtakingly made and seems so intent on communicating a positive message about the human condition. Perhaps the bar was set just a little too high and there was nowhere for this particular Icarus to fly to, only somewhere to fall.

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Mike Tyrkus

Editor in Chief at CinemaNerdz.com
An independent filmmaker, co-writer and director of over a dozen short films, the Editor in Chief of CinemaNerdz.com has spent much of the last three decades as a writer and editor specializing in biographical and critical reference sources in literature and the cinema, beginning in February 1991 reviewing films for his college newspaper. He was a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, as well as the group's webmaster and one-time President for over a decade until the group ceased to exist. His contributions to film criticism can be found in Magill's Cinema Annual, VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (of which he was the editor for nearly a decade until it too ceased to exist), the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, and the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (on which he collaborated with editor Andrew Sarris). He has also appeared on the television program Critic LEE Speaking alongside Lee Thomas of FOX2 and Adam Graham, of The Detroit News. He currently lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their dogs.

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