Tenet

 

The unnamed Protagonist (John David Washington), a CIA agent, is recruited by an organization called Tenet to track the sale of “inverted” weapons that fire backward through time. Working alongside Neil (Robert Pattinson), the Protagonist traces inverted bullets to arms dealer Priya (Dimple Kapadia), who reveals that her weapons were sold to Russian oligarch Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh). To get close to Sator, the Protagonist approaches his estranged wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), a crooked art appraiser blackmailed and controlled by Sator. Though distrustful of one another, the CIA agent and the oligarch form an uneasy partnership to steal a shipment of plutonium, but threats from the future loom over everything.

 

Tenet is an apt showcase for the best and the worst of Christopher Nolan’s capabilities. Its action set pieces – an opera house extraction mission, a literal highway robbery and subsequent high-speed chase, and an airport fight, among others – are masterfully shot, tense and exhilarating. They pair perfectly with Ludwig Gonarsson’s score. Yet Tenet took one of the most audience-alienating aspects of Interstellar – time travel backed by theoretical physics – and made it integral to the film. What could have been time-hopping James Bond far too often feels like a confusing and self-indulgent attempt to contextualize the on-screen action.

 

If the audience seems bogged down by the film’s complexities and demands, the cast does not. Washington, the son of Denzel, may lack his father’s range, but he brings an unflappable presence and an ex-NFL player’s athleticism to the leading role. The ever-versatile Pattinson takes a break from playing tortured loners in a largely sympathetic turn. That same quality extends to Debicki’s Kat, impressive given that the character is also a bitter schemer. In lesser hands, Sator would be simply another hammy Russian megalomaniac, but Branagh’s fatalistic nihilism and utter ruthlessness elevate him into something more terrifying.

 

Refreshingly cerebral at the start and hopelessly convoluted by the end, what Tenet lacks in coherence it makes up for in solid performances and visual spectacle.