REVIEW #43 Tenet (2020)

Tenet is an action/thriller directed by Christopher Nolan about a secret agent tasked with preventing world war 3 but this isn’t a usual mission. He must travel through time to complete his task, armed with just one word, Tenet.

CAST & THE ACTING (8/10)

The casting was great for this film with John David Washington playing the lead role, named ‘The Protagonist’ but the other cast members include Robert Pattison, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Elizabeth Debicki and Kenneth Branagh. The acting was convincing and the choreography for the combat scenes were really good, especially because a lot of it was backwards! Whether that was them acting some scenes that way or simply just rewinding footage, it come across well! There was some good accents used with Pattisons upper class British accent and even Branagh’s Russian accent. So I believe that a decent score is deserved here. 

PLOT & THE STORYLINE (5/10)

I really didn’t like this storyline, it is very much Christopher Nolan’s style, causing confusion for the audience. Attempting to get the audience asking questions which hooks them into the film. However I believe the storyline was to ambitious, the idea of time travel isn’t hard to perceive now, it has been used so often but I don’t think the film ever really explains how they actually do it. I think it jumped from one place to the other so chaotically that it was hard to keep track of what was going on. I love a film that gets me asking questions and has me guessing but this film took that to the extreme. What I will say as well is that I saw major similarities between this and the Night Manager, an undercover agent infiltrating a huge arms dealer inner circle, getting close to his wife in the process. They even used the same actress from the Night manager to play the wife in Tenet, I couldn’t believe it! For both of those reasons I have to give a really poor score here.

CINEMATOGRAPHY & SPECIAL EFFECTS (8/10)

The cinematography was pretty good in this film, as I mentioned above, the combat scenes were captured so well. I liked how they were recorded backwards to emphasise the time travelling element to the film. The effects looked great going backwards too, for example the explosions that went off in reverse! It all looked very good on screen and made for an entertaining film. They did construct good transitions between scenes as well but the only thing that let it down was the plot because the transitions were wasted because it just got a little too confusing.

OVERALL (7/10)

I think there were some great elements to this film, seeing the combat choreography in reverse looked great on screen and the effects filmed in a similar fashion made it really entertaining. However this film was seriously let down by the plot in my opinion. It was to chaotic and confusing without any real explanation of what was going on and how they were doing what they were doing. I understand this is the style of Nolan who likes to make films in this way, confusing the audience but I think this time it just didn’t work out. Not to mention the fact I think it is exactly like the Night Manager where they even used the exact same actress in the exact same role of the wife of the dangerous arms dealer. So because of that I have to give this film a really average score of 7 out of 10. Perhaps if the plot was more understandable then maybe it could be higher.

Thanks for reading.

Callan