A special ops soldier is recruited into a shadowy government agency
​that's trying to prevent a global apocalypse by use of time inversion.

ACTION/SCI-FI

Tenet (2020)

Written and Directed by Christopher Nolan

Starring John David Washington, Robert Pattinson,
​Elizabeth Debicki, Kenneth Branagh, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Clémence Poésy, Himesh Patel, Michael Caine

Oscar Wins - Best Visual Effects

Oscar Nominations - Best Production Design

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Connor Eyzaguirre

September 7, 2020

8/10

There was doubt that Tenet would ever see the light of day. Earlier this year, film after film was pulled from the release calendar due to the COVID-19 pandemic closing the movie theaters. In the past few months, theaters began to steadily reopen and Tenet became the unofficial face of the theater revival. It's only gotten a limited release in the United States, but it's still on track to at least make its money back. And it's wild movie. Christopher Nolan is known for making highly cerebral, thinking man's action movies, and Tenet is easily his most ambitious to date. It's a film that uses grounded physics to explain time travel in as realistic a way as possible. That isn't to say it's not confusing, but it's way easier to understand than Inception and twice as exciting.

John David Washington stars as an unnamed protagonist who is recruited into the shadow organization Tenet, which fights to protect the world from time inverted threats. Robert Pattinson plays his partner Neil and Kenneth Branagh plays the sadistic Russian arms dealer trying to end the world using a literal time bomb. Tenet's goal is to stop him, but Tenet comes from the future too, or at least I'm pretty sure it does. The whole film is essentially a recursion, and it'll take a few watches to understand the bulk of it. The real stars are the intense action sequences and the unbelievable score by Ludwig Göransson.

While the characters aren't particularly memorable and the story is very difficult to understand, the film is entertaining and really makes you pay attention. The production design is stellar and Nolan is still one of the best filmmakers working today when it comes to action thrillers with something to say. And this one is definitely an exciting one to go back to the theaters for.