Tenet

Movie Name: Tenet
Year of Release: 2020
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Kenneth Branagh, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, Clemence Poesy, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Martin Donovan, Himesh Patel, Anthony Molinari, Laurie Shepherd
Genre: Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 3
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Synopsis and Review

After the critical and commercial success of "Dunkirk", writer/producer/director Christopher Nolan decided to tackle a deconstructed take on time travel, married with some of the familiar layers he usually peppers his stories with. The film premiered at the height of the Covid 19 pandemic, and didn't get much tracking, particularly when compared to his previous endeavors, which also precipitated his abandon of the long term relationship he had with Warner Brothers. The film focuses on a character we only know by the Protagonist, who gets involved with an underground organization, with the intent to prevent a notorious arms dealer by the name of Andrei Sator to get access to various critical ingredients which will enable him to have nuclear capabilities. While doing this, he gets acquainted with Andrei's wife Kat, who is in a precarious situation when it comes to her personal relationship with Andrei. He also forges a partnership with the resourceful Neil, who always knows a bit more than he leads on. The Protagonist soon realizes that Andrei is always a step ahead, because he has access to futuristic technology which enables him to walk through different timelines and control the outcome of everything. That in itself turns out to be an additional layer of danger he and his team have to learn to overcome so they can avoid the collapse of the entire planet. 

I've long been a big fan of Christopher Nolan, since he always manages to find a fine balance between the cerebral aspect of the stories he's trying to tell, with the human layer which surrounds them, since he has understood all along that without characters, without a human heart at the core of these pseudo-intellectual reflections, there's nothing to vie for. "Tenet" is a big stumble for the director, one where the love for the mechanism of the story is all there, but the marriage with the human element, and the characters themselves for that matter, simply isn't properly addressed or solved for. One of the biggest puzzling effects for instance, is the relationship that is established between Andrei (played by the stupendous Kenneth Branagh) and his wife Kat. It essentially plays itself out like a mediocre action B-movie of the 80s (it reminded me of the plot machinations of some of the Cannon films), never truly expanding much on who these characters or what their goals are, aside from destroying everything (a) and saving a child (b). Truth be told "Inception" failed to elevate much of the familiar relationship of Leonardo Di Caprio's character with Marion Cotillard's, but his guilt propelled him, and instilled a drive in him to keep the game going. Here the director seemingly focused solely on the aspect of the time displacement mechanism, and forgot to wrap actual characters around all this. What ends up happening is a cold observation of what are seemingly very important exchanges between these characters, all of which feels stilted and unimaginative. Where "Inception" constantly felt like time was running out (or stretching itself out), this one relies so much on exposition, and what the mechanism does, that at some point the characters themselves are trying to figure out what all this means (and maybe that was one of the goals of the film itself). To top it all off, the visual effects that populate the narrative end up feeling lackluster and frankly cheap, which is something surprising for a film with this type of budget (and I'm going to say that unlike Doug Liman's "Edge of Tomorrow", this one is not going to age well in that regard). What is left at the end of this interminable saga? Mostly the presence of Kenneth Branagh, who even with an underwritten and cliché ridden role is still a joy to behold, the same going for Robert Pattinson who plays a good supporting character, a bit of a cypher but somewhat of a generic one as well. The cinematography from the wonderful Hoyte van Hoytema is fantastic, as is the score from Ludwig Goransson. It's not a very realized vision from this director, and feels like at some point someone should have said: "we need to talk about this". Too bad no one ever did.