Tenet, Christopher Nolan 2020 Film

I am part of a PLEX network with a few friends, and this film appeared on one of my friends PCs yesterday. It doesn't release until next week, so it's probably a questionable source, but hey, I watched it anyway.


First impression is that Nolan bit of a bit more than he could chew this time around. As ynwtf said, I think this probably worked better as a script, only to prove extremely difficult to pull of on screen without scrambling the viewer's brain a bit. Removing the red herrings in the spy bits would have helped tighten this up.


I liked the cast, and I was able to follow events fairly will, but overall, this one lacked the elegance and smooth fit it required to really work.

Just FYI, PLEX is also in-game currency for EvE-Online that can be sold for subscription time. Also, I think that was the second time someone has referenced one of my reviews in a post in all my time here (as little as that's been). I feel Perdy. Oh so Perdy!

I'm kinda surprised that, even for Tenet clearly the most divisive Nolan's film to come, I rarely heard the praise for ludwig's score from the cons.
hate or love the film, but the music is still something else.

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Agree. The score is excellent.

At least people from the future can agree about one thing

I remember the feeling having watched Nolan's previous films with a bit of intrigue like Prestige or Inception, you can't wait to see them again,

With Tenet it felt like a chore of getting to the end just so I can say I've seen it, and even though there's no doubt lots that I've misunderstood or missed I can't see myself ever wanting to watch this again.

Probably his worst film.

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I never miss an opportunity to pimp an essay, so I'll just quietly note that Tenet contains another "useful lie," ala Christopher Nolan's Useful Lies.

Credit cards, email , text, mofos' post - anything that goes into the record speaks directly to the future. The question is, can the future speak back?

Good read. You could add The Following to it as well, with respect to the concept of useful lie. Also, it is one of his better movies.

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it.

Yeah, I might go update it, both with The Following and with the films of his since, that have very much kept it going.

Just watched this last night. I really enjoyed this movie! I’m a fan of Nolan’s, so I was looking forward to it.
The details that you catch in this is important. The little things.

I will say I found it a little predictable.
I kept telling my brother my suspicions on the identity of the mystery man in the turnstile at the airport and was correct in that. To say more would spoil it though.

The final battle left me unimpressed for some reason, or maybe because the last 20 mins or so dragged during it. It wasn’t as exciting as I thought it would be. Maybe I’m just jaded when it comes to action scenes.

Altogether, it was a good movie. It got confusing on occasion when it came to the explanations on the inversions, but much like Inception, I think a rewatch will definitely help clear this up more.

Every scene just seemed to go into each other with no connective tissue. I could only understand what was happening in that immediate moment but nothing had connections to the rest of the movie. It was just like having a crazy action packed dream with no coherent plot.

***out of *****
Visually gorgeous with a great soundtrack, but a completely rushed storyline that tries WAY to hard to be like Inception (which had the interesting wife sub-plot instead of Tenet's cliches) with having 2 separate timelines while making about 1/10th as much sense. Characters were also meh, but the action was great. Definitely Nolan's worst.

Here's my take on the film:


TENET (2020)

Being hesitant and somewhat ambivalent about watching this picture due to mediocre ratings and an unknown star (to me), it was being referenced so often that it became time to view it.

The film was predictably complex, what with time inversion and time travel, but the story was interesting enough in its weave, but yet rather simple in it’s premise: an espionage thriller in which an organization named “Tenet” tries to prevent World War III. The ins and outs of the action and development are too complicated to summarize here, and I’m not sure I understand it completely at any rate.

As a thriller it’s a dilly. And the special effects are impressive once one realizes what they’re portraying on screen. I prefer the effects in Nolan’a Inception, but here the effects are pretty stunning. Nolan’s experience in battlefield camera work served him well in Tenet.

Still, the picture somewhat fizzles. Through it’s imparted confusion there’s a updrafting sense that something is missing from the overall punch of the production. Perhaps there were so many disparate parts that the project didn’t seem to congeal, to hold together.

Part of the problem was the mediocre acting of the lead, John David Washington. I’m not privy to how he was selected for the part, but he does not have enough acting talent or experience to carry such an important role. He would be fine in a straight action movie, but he is unable at this point in his career to express the nuances necessary to pull off a complex part. This is made even more obvious when his character is interacting with some of the better actors, like Robert Pattinson or Michael Caine.

Bless her heart, Elizabeth Debicki is a decent actress, and has had several fine parts. But at 6’2”, why did they have her wear 5” heels? She already has a giraffe like presence, but making her 5” taller, towering over everyone in the cast, is positively burlesque-- almost a satire. When she was sitting, one could focus on her portrayal, her character. Standing, she was a redwood in an orange grove.

The picture cost $200M. It didn’t recoup it’s expense, and reportedly Warner Bros. lost $100M on the deal.
Tenet had the makings of a top film, but as it turned out it’s just an interesting, but off target curio.

Doc’s rating: 5/10

Yeah at first I was thinking "good casting choice, seems promising" but then, as you said...

I sort of half-arsed followed along with the time travel aspect but the whole Westworldy dialogue of "changing the past which you cannot change but the future is set and we can't change that but you know what, I think we can change the present to influence the future of a past we cannot change. That is reality" malarkie was a bit of a tune-out.

Thought the baddie was good though. Did enjoy his sweet, sweet clunky death when he did a "oooh, that'll hurt in the morning" tumble off his own boat. He took a VERY nasty bang to the head! Also the bit how they revealed who the woman diving off the boat was 2 hours later was some insanely creative writing.

Japanese woman at work has gone full berko over this film and watched it numerous times, in Japanese, then English, then with subtitles, then without, and says she wants to keep watching it again and again until she completely understands it. Havent the heart to tell her this director doesnt give a toss about the actual order of the universe (whatever the hell that is) or what might or might not be feasible in the time space continuum and will gladly lead her down the garden path and through the brambles that open out to the emptied cul de sac addressed "WFT Grove" and then leave her there to her own devices forever.

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https://rottentomatoes.boards.net/

Good points, Sprague. BTW, did you mean to write "WTF" Grove...

Absolutely not. I never use internet shorthand.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on that.

I bought the movie on Saturday and I’ve seen it four times so far. It could have been better in some regards, but overall I think it worked. It worked damn well.

Fair question. I think I need to see the movie again to give an interesting answer. But first blush, the central premise of the movie does seem to mostly fit the mold, without saying more or resorting to spoiler tags.