Tenet ( 2020) film review

Tweet

Star – John David Washington My Rating Genre – Sci-Fi Run Time – 2 hr 23 Minutes. Certificate – 15 Country – U.S.A Oscars - 1 Awards – Wins & Nominations = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = So Tenet, the blockbuster movie that took on the pandemic at its height. So tricky a year for film it was, this much anticipated and delayed Christopher Nolan Sci-Fi blockbuster got its first cinema release in Hungary of all places before weaving its way through lockdowns across the world to eventually gross $350 million, 20-30% of its pre pandemic projected revenue, a perfunctory billion plus dollar movie in every sense. Bond, the other big 2020 planned release, wisely held back until 2021 so maybe the Tenet people thought it would hoover up as the only show in town from the brave souls who trickled into cinemas. In context the money it did wasn’t a bad effort, considering, in the cinema for a long truncated run. It would end up the 5th highest grossing film of 2020 with $363 million dollars from a $200 million budget, just behind Bad Boys for Life, still doing money from 2019, the more virus free South East Asia seeing those countries foreign language films top the world wide list for the first time, an animated R-Rated film from Japan holding top spot last December with $476 million dollars gross. Tenet is a palindrome, of course, a word that reads the same backwards and forwards, the theme of this, yet again a fun and bonkers Christophe Nolan movie playing with time travel and quantum physics themes and ideas. It was 8 years in the making and shelved for a while so Nolan could work on Interstellar, a similarly bamboozling Sci- Fi epic. ===Cast=== • John David Washington a CIA agent • Robert Pattinson as Neil, • Elizabeth Debicki as Kat, • Dimple Kapadia as Priya • Michael Caine as Crosby, a British Intelligence officer • Kenneth Branagh as Sata • Martin Donovan as Fay,, CIA boss • Fiona Dourif as Wheeler, leader of Blue Team • Yuri Kolokolnikov as Volkov, Sator's bodyguard ===Plot=== We hit the ground running as a CIA agent (John David Washington) and his swat team takes down a hostage situation in an opera house in central Europe. The mission is a mess and he ends up captured by nasty Russian terrorists, held at gunpoint to give up his team but managing to take his suicide pill just in time. But he wakes up alive in a safe medical facility, the pill fake, a loyalty test by his CIA handlers. Soon after he is recruited by a group called Tenet, our CIA man ticking all the boxes for this well funded and non-hostile but armed organization. He is introduced to the mysterious world of inversion munitions, technology not of this world, or, at least, not of this time period. Bullets go backwards, explosions implode and pretty much everything is weird. Alongside his enigmatic handler (Robert Pattinson) the pair set about finding out who is making these munitions and where. Do they have a plan in mind to use them? An Indian arms dealer (Dimple Kapadia) is the first big clue, the team off to Mumbai to check out the contact. That leads to Russian oligarch (Kenneth Branagh), a megalomaniac, his weak point being his leggy ex wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki). ===Result=== It’s a bit confusing at times, a Christopher Nolan trait, but enjoyable all the same. The ending is very unique and cleverly done, action packed all the way. It won the Oscar for its visual effects and nominated for production design, not easy to plan the action scenes with everything going backwards - and forwards. When you think about it, a weapon that makes everything go backwards is kinda pointless but you don’t care as you just get caught up in this bunkum, well over two hours of it. The casting is a bit off, John David Washington not the best looking black actor around and not the tallest; 10 cm’s shorter than his famous father, Denzel, and much smaller than the lead female lead here, Elizabeth Debicki a towering 6ft 3! Maybe he cast a tall bird to avoid that still black and white taboo kiss in Hollywood?. You get the feeling JD would not be an actor without his famous dad around. He made it big on the enjoyable Black Klansman but you also get the feeling the pressure is on to cast black actors in lead roles where they perhaps don’t fit. I don’t know if Christopher Nolan didn’t want to cast a tall square-jawed male for a specific reason the way Matt Damon changed things as Jason Bourne but this just didn’t feel right. Robert Pattinson is also a surprise casting and it takes while to realize it’s him with his 80s blonde hair, perma-tan and those things called wrinkles. ===RATINGS=== Imdb.com - 7.4/10.0 (349,234votes) Rottentomatos.com –70% critic’s approval Metacritic.com – 70% critic’s approval ===Trailer===