Tenet: "Don't try to understand it, feel it"

It is the year of 2020 and cinema is reaching its last breaths. The overlords of Disney have fled to streaming sites while huge franchises like James Bond and Marvel refuse to release globally until COVID 19 has been removed. It all seems hopeless for cinema fans (including myself) but there is one last hope, and his name, is Nolan.

With his eleventh feature film after his dive into genre filmmaking with sci-fi epic Interstellar and war time thriller Dunkirk. Nolan once again returns to his roots with a new action packed spy enigma that plays with the concepts of time and narrative, Tenet. The title itself is a giveaway to the films main attraction as a palindrome, a sequence that reads the same backwards and forwards. This is explored by our protagonist played by John David Washington, a CIA operative thrown into a secret Cold War between the present and their future. The film unfolds more in the vein of a James Bond experience, darting from one expensive location to another, thwarting the plans of time travelling arms dealers from foreign powers. All with an added sense of confusion and enjoyment that only Nolan can provide.

From the instant this film begins we are thrown into the tactical espionage action we come to expect from Nolan, but this in particular rarely takes its foot off the gas pedal. Each sequence of action is almost choreographed to perfection, starting off in normal time while setting up the element of reverse entropy for later on. This is by far the greatest feat of the film, creating a sense of shock and awe both with the explosiveness and the level of imagination it takes to create each sequence. This combined with the incredible film score of Ludwig Goranssen, after his Oscar winning work on Black Panther, added the hi tech visceral intensity that is a refreshing contrast from the grand orchestral pieces of previous long time composer Hans Zimmer. Nolan has always managed to express narrative in multiple mediums of film, here it seems like he tells a story through the language of Micheal Bay. Each action scene leaves little hints at what would be key twists in the narrative so those hooked on the story would find exhilaration in watching it unfold, as well as helping the audience who would be lost on the plot by giving something to admire in a way that only cinema can achieve. 

In terms of the plot it is certainly not gunna be everyones cup of tea. Its strange juxtaposition of a head scratching time inversion plot device with a narrative that boasts its cartoonish array of characters straight out of a 70s spy film. This includes a cheesy soviet inspired arms dealer villain Andrei Sator (performed by Kenneth Branaghs dodgy Russian accent), a smooth talking British intelligence officer (Robert Pattinson). Even the brief cameo by Michael Caine seems like a passing of the torch of his former glory days as down to earth super spy Harry Palmer in The Ipcress file, while also throwing shade at the protagonists suit choice. However, what is enjoyable about these characters takes away from their characterisation, which seems to take a back seat for the visuals and action set pieces. By far the most cohesive character arc was Sators wife Kat, played ferociously by Elizabeth Dubeki. She seemed to be the only character to have a redemption by the end, and we as the audience can revel in her success. Washington and Pattinson don't seem to have a cause or reason that drives them, other than a need to complete the mission. This is directly opposing Nolans previous smash hit Inception, where our protagonists characterisation and drive is the main focus of the film, and makes it that much more exuberant when we see him succeed. What is also strange is that the film ends on a slight sequel hook, leaving questions unanswered and making it seem like our protagonists journey is not yet over. Nolans only previous trilogy of films is in the Batman universe, and that has proven he gets better with each addition, so perhaps a sequel to this film would not go unwarranted. 

By the end, Nolan seems to have taken everything he loves about the spy genre and infused it with his creativity of time and suspense. With the Bond series they seem to be constricted to the ruleset that has been followed since the 60s, whereas Nolan proves that you can still incorporate the sleek and stylish coolness of bond but with sci-fi inspired plots and without the constant out of touch sex scenes with random femme fatales. This has been done before, from Spielberg creating an action hero in archeology with Indiana Jones, to Hideo Kojima combining western Bond tropes with his ennui of nuclear weapons as Solid Snake in Metal Gear, and I'm sure our protagonist will be next in that list. I do feel a sense of worry for Nolan now that he has been brought in as the "saviour of cinema", but if any film had to make the first plunge into the unknown I'm glad it was this one. And if during the film you feel confused and lost, the film even tells you what to do, "Don't try to understand it, feel it".

Film Grade- B