First, let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room here. Movie theaters have been closed for about six months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and so this year has been really scarce for big-name releases. A few planned releases got pushed onto streaming services, but most studios just opted to postpone release dates. Christopher Nolan, however, was adamant that he still wanted his new movie Tenet to come out in theaters, which was a problem since it had a planned July release. It did get delayed a bit, but for better or worse movie theaters have started re-opening these last few weeks, and so Tenet is the big movie to re-open the cinemas. I’m sure a lot of people have mixed feelings about all of this, so I do just want to say that I did go see Tenet in theaters last weekend, and I only did so because I personally felt comfortable doing so. I don’t think anyone ever needs to put themselves at risk just to see a movie, so if you live in a high-risk area, are at high-risk for dying from the virus, or just generally still don’t feel safe, then I want to say that I am not urging anyone to needlessly put themselves at risk. For me personally, I live in a state that’s been handling things fairly well, my theater has put many precautions in place to make it a safe environment, and I continued to respect all of the rules of face mask wearing, social distancing, and sanitation. I definitely felt conflicted about going to the movies at the start of the pandemic, because I wanted to be safe, but also wanted to continue supporting movie theaters, since I’m passionate about their existence. So, I would not have gone to see Tenet if I felt that there was a high risk in doing so. But since I had the option of doing so, I took it, and it was great to be back in the theater to see a spectacle like Tenet.

On a conceptual level, I think that the premise of Tenet is nothing short of brilliant. Our protagonist (who is just named The Protagonist) is put on a really unusual mission. Apparently, people from the future have learned how to manipulate time in order to make an object or person go through time in reverse. This is first introduced by showing a bullet hole in a wall, and having us then see the bullet fire backwards back into the gun. The Protagonist is tasked with figuring out how this is being done, and for what purposes, since it seems to be nefarious.

On paper, Tenet is a masterpiece. It has all of the right elements to make for one of the most brilliant sci-fi action movies in years. The problem is that in execution, it falls short. My only real issue with Tenet is its presentation, but its presentation is a HUGE problem. Let’s start with the easiest to explain. The audio mixing is some of the worst I think I’ve ever heard in a movie. This is without a doubt the loudest movie I’ve ever seen in a theater, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just my theater since I’ve heard similar complaints from others. So, the range in volume is all over the place, but even more than that it just isn’t mixed well. Christopher Nolan has been doing this really odd thing in a lot of his recent movies where he really ramps up the music in sections where characters are speaking. This makes it so that you can barely make out what a character is saying over the blaring music. I think that Nolan’s style of audio mixing has worked really well for some of his movies in the past, such as Dunkirk (with the audio elements probably being my favorite aspect of that movie), but in Tenet it just doesn’t work. There are moments where heightened sound effects really add a punch to the action scenes, but for the most part it just bothered me.

The other problem with the movie’s presentation is with its storytelling. Tenet is a very confusing movie, and while I appreciate a director who isn’t scared of not needing to spoon-feed his audience, Tenet just doesn’t really explain its story very well. I’ve heard that this is a movie that makes a lot more sense on a second viewing, so I’d be curious to see if that is true for myself, but I just didn’t understand a lot of the minutiae of the story details. It’s very easy to pick up on the broad strokes of what the movie is about, thankfully, but I had a lot of questions by the time everything was said and done. I think part of the problem is the way the movie is edited together. I just didn’t find it to be straightforward with how it presented its story.

These sound like some heavy complaints for a movie that I ultimately loved, but that’s only because these are the things that detracted from a movie that I otherwise probably would have given a perfect score. That’s because the things that I loved about the movie I thought were exceptional. I already mentioned loving the premise itself, so I’ll get into some of the other interesting stuff as well.

I think that one of the best things about Tenet is its visual effects. There’s obviously some well-done CGI thrown in here, but there are also just many cool camera tricks that Nolan pulls off in some of the shots. The effects really live up to the premise, with many shots of one person going forward while another person or object is going backwards at the same time. As you can imagine, this makes for some very inventive action sequences, and Nolan manages to shoot these scenes in some really creative ways. If nothing else, I think that the movie is worth seeing for this reason alone.

The other big aspect that I need to shout out is the acting. I think that John Washington does a great job as The Protagonist. As you can imagine from his name (or lack thereof), he’s meant to be a “nobody” or “everyman,” and the issue that’s easy to run into with this is having the character have no personality at all. So, Washington balances this dynamic well, giving an interesting performance for a character without any defining traits. There are a lot of great performances in the movie, but the other two that I need to shout out are Robert Pattinson and Kenneth Brannagh. There has been a lot of talk lately about how good of an actor Robert Pattinson is ever since he got cast as Batman. Many people were worried about this choice just because of his affiliation with the Twilight series, but Pattinson has definitely grown from the early days of his career and has delivered some stellar performances since then. Tenet in particular should be a comfort for people that are apprehensive about him being Batman, because his performance here shows that he’s able to carry an action movie. Then, as far as Kenneth Brannagh goes, he easily stole the show for me. The man chews up every scene he’s in and delivers such a menacing villain.

In the end, I love what Christopher Nolan brought to the table with Tenet, as I think it’s one of the most creative and interesting works he’s ever done. I just wish that the movie was presented better, because it’s really hard to get past some of those presentation problems. I still think everyone that has an interest in Tenet should watch it (at least at some point if you can’t get out to the theater right now), since movies like this don’t get made often enough. Tenet takes a lot of risks, most of which pay off. I don’t think that Tenet quite ranks among Nolan’s absolute bests, but when all is said and done it’s still a really great movie that I would love to watch again to see if I can make more sense of it all.

4/5