Saturday, December 19, 2020

Tenet - Movie Review


The Movie: Tenet

The Director: Christopher Nolan

The Cast: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, Kenneth Branagh

The Story: I have no idea.


The Review:
I have seen people say that to understand this movie, you have to watch it multiple times. No thanks. Once was enough for me and I doubt if I will ever revisit it so the mysteries and wonders of understanding what this movie is about will remain hidden from me. The best I can gather is that Christopher Nolan took bits and pieces from all his movies and tried to make something that would be a truly mind blowing experience. What I got out of it is an overly indulgent, incoherent, and overblown bit of filmmaking that shows how much Nolan may be disconnecting from his audience.

The whole time inversion thing doesn't really make sense and I was never interested enough while watching the movie to try and figure it out. Nolan asks the viewer to take a lot leaps in faith and in logic to get his story told and I suppose if you're willing to take that deep dive and then go back in for the second look, it might be worth it. Even with all of the tricks and sleight of hand in play, the story is quite honestly pretty basic and rather predictable when it comes down to it. The third act has a series of reveals that either you've already picked up on or they're not worth revisiting the second time around.

I will say there are a lot of large scale action sequences which probably would have made for a fun large format theater viewing experience although this is 2020 so even that aspect lands with a bit of a thud on home theaters systems. Sure, some people got to see it in theaters but for me it was never worth the risk and I'm not mad about missing out so whatever. Ultimately, what this movie says to me is that Christopher Nolan really thinks highly of himself as a filmmaker which can be a creative asset if channeled properly, it just wasn't this time around.


The Verdict:
Tenet is the 2020 blockbuster that failed to live up to expectations and was unable to save the industry from a pandemic. The whole thing is a flailing attempt at recreating the high concept style and tone of Inception, Nolan's story was just too convoluted and shallow to dive back into the deep end of the pool.


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