(NON-SPOILER): Directed by Christopher Nolan, TENET follows a secret agent as he embarks on a dangerous, time-bending mission to prevent the start of World War III.
It goes without saying that this was easily everyone’s most anticipated release this year, as Christopher Nolan has delivered many incredible and thought provoking films. He has also delivered some mind bending films like Inception and Interstellar that took time for people to understand and appreciate, and I can definitely say TENET falls under that category. Now does that make the movie bad? Absolutely not. I honestly thought this was a fantastic movie and well worth the wait.
I was trying not to go in with any massive expectations, only because I wanted the film to surprise me and deliver what it wants rather than what I want. And I got a lot of surprises from this movie and was very entertained by it.
As I stated above this is a non-spoiler review so I will not be giving any specific plot details of the story. All you get is the one sentence summary I made in the beginning. Plus this is a film that is rather hard to describe anyways and it’s just better for people to see it rather than have someone try to explain it because, similar to Inception, people will take away different things when they watch TENET.
I think that many movie goers and fellow reviewers are going to come away with mixed feelings about it, because there is certainly a lot to take in, from the narrative to the ambitious scale this film reaches. That being said, I actually didn’t feel this movie was that overcomplicated to follow, unlike what others have been saying. And it’s a very interesting story to follow, I was always, always engaged and interested in what everyone was saying and doing. It’s certainly complex but things do become clearer as the film progresses, and it leaves visual clues that come up later.
Iif you are big into espionage movies then I think you’re going to have an absolute blast with this, as well as feel relieved on how refreshing and unique this film is compared to other espionage flicks.
There is a big chunk of exposition present, which I feel does kinda drag the film down a bit, but the film makes up for it with strongly paced action, stunning cinematography and effects, and a great cast. Plus, even with the exposition it doesn’t really treat you like an idiot at all. Nolan really treats the audience respectfully, allowing us to embrace what is happening.
John David Washington continues to be an outstanding lead in this film and driving the story. Supporting him is Robert Pattinson who absolutely steals the show as the character Neil, once again proving he has serious acting chops. I still consider his performance in The Lighthouse to be the best of his career so far, but his work here is almost on par.
I also didn’t expect a lot from Elizabeth Debicki and Kenneth Branagh in this film but damn, did they own the screen when they came along. There are also a few surprising faces I didn’t expect but I won’t go into that for the sake of spoilers.
The action in this film was supposedly done with zero green screen, that everything on screen was 100% real, and holy shit is it absolutely incredible. They really went all out for this movie and I seriously have to give them big props for all they could accomplish without the use of CGI. It was adrenaline fueled and full of great tension, making this the film with probably the best-made action of this whole year. And my lord, does the cinematography perfectly capture the absolute grand scale of this adventure. I can imagine this would look absolutely phenomenal on an IMAX screen.
Ludwig Göransson’s score does sound a bit Han Zimmer in the beginning, but it does transition to a unique sounding score that was truly fantastic to hear. Ludwig has truly proven to be an excellent yet seemingly overlooked composer in recent years. Something to note, though, is that there were sometimes I found the sound editing to be a bit strange. Most of the time it’s absolutely brilliant but other times it gets a bit overbearing, especially during scenes where characters talk.
I can see why people may feel rather on the fence about this movie, but at the same time I feel they might be too harsh about it. This is definitely a movie that has to be rewatched for sure, but at the same time even on the first viewing it offers a lot of great stuff that I think some people aren’t looking at because they wanted certain things themselves. I kind of feel that’s a major issue with most viewers and reviewers nowadays, that we have such high standards for films these days that it restricts our ability to fully enjoy and embrace some of the content we get, including original works like this one.
I love a lot of Nolan’s other films but I don’t feel right in comparing any of them to each other due to how different they all are. So I chose to not limit myself when going to see this, and after doing so I can definitely say that I loved this movie and that I will definitely be wanting to give it another viewing soon. I’m going to give TENET an A.
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