Tenet is a por- and pre- kind of movie: portentious and preposterous. Poor-man's-Bond and pretend-deep. Lots of boom and bang & billionaire-y conspicuous consumption wrapped around a rod of pure Nonsense. I enjoyed it a lot.
It's a hard movie to discuss without spoilers, but I'll have a go. It's overlong. It drags particularly in its final act, a clonking battle sequence (actors filmed running backwards such that the footage can be reversed to make them look like they're running forwards through imploding smokebombs and rubble reassembling into buildings .... don't look like actors running forwards. That's just not how they look). The characters are so thin in terms of writing—and in some cases literally—you could use them as rizlas. ‘The Protagonist’, a beefy if generic John David Washington, is nothing but his superspy character, so disconnected from the rest of the human race that he doesn't even realise his best friend is his best friend until the end, and doesn't even boff the movie's, tall, rigyd no-Bond-y Girl (Elizabeth Debicki). Debicki's English rose is married to a villanous Russian oligarch (Kenneth Branagh, aiming for menace but hitting growly-chunky) who is Antag to our heroic Protag. The narrative is all twisty-turny plot. It's no spoiler to say: once you know the forward-backward timeywimey premise (as we all do, now) you spot the twists a mile away.
Given all that, it's remarkable how much fun it is.
Tenet is not so much high concept as ‘huh?’ concept. Were I to start listing, spoilerishly, all the holes in plot & worldbuilding, why then we'd know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall. Or a Kiev opera house. But you don't want the movie spoiled, so I won't. Not here. I may discuss a couple of the more egregious daftnesses in the comments: St Nemmoce (h/t) N.I. ses ‘sent fads uoiger’. Gee! Rome (h/t!) foe L. P. U. O'Cassuc (Sid). Yam? I ere (h/t!!) on't now, ios'd eliopse, I vom, eh, T T Nawt. Nod. U, oy! Tubes u ... oh a repo veik a rollah treblae htl lifot sekatt. I see! Lo! Hynam (woh!) wonk dew men mey H. W G Nidliubdl row & tolpni seloh, eh, t'l lay L.H.: Sir E Liops-Gnitsiltrat, sot, i.e. rewt (P. Ecnoch) ... uh: sat pecnoch G.I. hh cum ostonsi-tenet. Sit in (ufh ...) cum.
Wo!
Hel bakramers? Tit? aht! Llanevigy, awa' e lima St Siwte (h/t) tops u. Oy! wonodl—la—ew!—saes I, me (R. Pye) mewy emit draw k-cab (drawr of E.H.T. wonk). U! oy! ecno! yas ... O'Treil, ops on St Itolp.
Y? N? Rut ... y? 'ts I wtl la siev. It arrane (h/t Gator PC). I, or ehru, oot gat nasioh: wy? knuh cyl-worgg nittih tube-can EMR of gnimi, ah, ganarb h/t ennekh crag. I, lo! na is sursu on ally vaot dei rams, i.e. sorh silgnes ikci bed ikci bed the bazil ‘el rigyd no-Bond-y girl’, lat sei, vomeht f-fob nevet n' se odd nad, née H. T: Litnud neir f/t. Sebs ... I (Sidnei) raft. Sebs I, he, silaer ne vet'n se ode h/t a h/t e-car namu heh. T: Fotser (eh) t'morf de t'cennoc sidos ret-car ah! Cy (PS re puss ih tub). G-nih tons, I (not G-nih) saw diva. D. N. Hoj. cire neg fly feeb at sin ogatorpe h/t salzir sa mehte sud luocu (oyy!) llaretil sesac emos nid-nag-nit i.r.w. fos m'ret ninih to Sera's ret car ‘ah'ceht’. Kool? Yeh. T? woh! tonts u jst ahts draw'r of gninnurs rot cae kil koolag
