After a slew of delays following the outbreak of Covid-19, Tenet has finally reached cinemas as its writer and director, Christopher Nolan intended. I was surprised at the release of the film as Warner Bros. had pushed some of their larger releases backward shortly after Tenet arrived. Nonetheless, I was lucky enough to find a screening at a local pop-up drive-in cinema.
As with any of his films, Nolan kept Tenet's plot close to his chest prior to its release. In the trailer, it is billed as a spy thriller that incorporates a new kind of time travel, called inversion, to shake up its action sequences and set pieces. However, when watching the film, inversion becomes an overwhelming concept. For just under the film's first half, Nolan's script is a confusing myriad of exposition that becomes more tedious to understand as more intricacies of inversion are revealed. Once inversion 'clicks', after watching it in action, it doesn't feel unreasonable to assume that it could have been explained more succinctly to prop up the pacing of the film's first half.
The over-complication of inversion is the glaring problem with Tenet, especially when compared to Nolan's past achievements with narrative devices such as Inception's PASIV Device and Memento's amnesia-stricken protagonist. Its impact resonates in the character writing of the film's antagonist, Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh). With so much exposition allocated to inversion, there's a noticable lack of introspection given to Sator when compared to previous Nolan antagonists. As the film gives more clarity to inversion, the depth of Sator is lost under this weight and ultimately comes off as a tepidly generic antagonist with an oddly narcissistic motive to end the world.
This isn't to say, however, that Tenet is an overtly disappointing film. Where its script may fail, there are many aspects that make it a fun movie filled with action and charm. The latter comes from its two protagonists: a nameless spy played by John David Washington and Neil, played by Robert Pattinson. Both actors provide equally dynamic performances, riffing off each other perfectly in the same manner as other brilliant two-handers such as BlacKkKlansman and The Lighthouse. As the film develops, their chemistry becomes increasingly memorable and more fun to watch, especially during the film's tense action sequences.
Despite its flaring complexity in theory, inversion in practice is similarly a lot of fun to watch. In the often convoluted sub-genre of time travel sci-fi, Nolan's inversion feels like a unique way of using time travel to create tension and keep you engaged in the Tenet's captivating action sequences. Accomplishing the same goals, Ludwig Göransson's memorable score works brilliantly in synchronising with Tenet's fast-paced atmosphere. It mixes classical cinematic strings with futuristic synthesisers and even plays clips in reverse simultaneously with the film's inverted action sequences. It doesn't reach the epic highs of a Hans Zimmer score, but its consistency and experimentation makes it worthy of a Nolan feature.
Overall, Tenet is an incredibly fun film to watch. While it's unfortunately held back by an unbalanced script and a lack of intricate psychological commentary, its key performances, soundtrack and innovative action sequences keep it afloat.