Tenet 6/10

I consider myself something of a fan of Christopher Nolan's films.  The Prestige is one of my all time favourites, Memento is a ground-breaking film, and the Dark Knight trilogy is fantastic (even The Dark Knight Rises, which suffers in comparison to the nearly peerless Dark Knight).  In anticipation of seeing Tenet I set out on a Nolan binge.  I wasn't able to find his first directing effort (Following), but re-watched Memento, then tracked down Insomnia, before ploughing into Batman Begins and the Prestige.  I had planned to watch the films in order, but jumped ahead to Inception which I thought was the most similar to Tenet based on trailers I had seen - it looked complex and fascinatingly obscure, so I figured Inception was a good warm up for Tenet.

However, I have to say I found Tenet disappointing.  I watched the trailer many times, and each time I failed to really understand what the film was about.  I was okay with that - it's a rare treat these days to go into a film not knowing much about it - so I settled in on Saturday night to be taken on a journey.  Some spoiler-free reviews had described it as a Bond-esque film, and in that sense it's a journey.  Like many Bond films, it's a bit of a travelogue, moving from location to location.  And John David Washington gives off a Bond vibe as the "Protaganist."  His character is never named, evoking a similar trick used in Fight Club with Edward Norton's character.  He's a good looking man in a sharp suit, with an impressive array of fighting skills.  But I felt like his character never really progressed.  What I really enjoy about Nolan's films is the way the characters develop and evolve over the film.  Sadly, though, at the end the Protaganist doesn't seem all that different to what he started out as.  He knows a little more than he started with, but it doesn't feel like anything was accomplished or achieved.  In some ways, the emptiness of the Protaganist reflects the blank slate of the audience, onto which we would ordinarily expect to be illuminated by the end of the film.  But I left the theatre feeling as empty as when I entered (not counting the bucket of popcorn I ingested).  Like the Protaganist, I knew a little more than when I started, but I didn't feel any different.

The trailers hint at some big secret, maybe a shadowy organisation or cabal, or some intriguing gimmick.  I kept watching, waiting for some big trick or twist, or a reveal that would payoff the build up at the start.  But it never really happens.  The "time travel" element hinted at in the trailers is revealed, and I could explain it to you (I won't, as it's a spoiler), but it doesn't really matter.  The gimmick aside, it's a fairly standard story about an agent trying to stop a bad thing from happening.  He's not really in control of his actions, but where this could be a great starting point for a film about predestination and determinism, there's nothing really explored there.  Compared to Memento, which took the relatively simple idea of memory loss and used it to explore the nature of identity and agency, Tenet takes a neat idea and uses it as a set of train tracks to get us to the end.  Ultimately, it feels quite unsatisfying.

The action scenes are good, but the real achievement is in trying to map out the continuity of the scenes.  I'll assume that it tracks okay, but I gave up caring whether the cause/effect/cause was in the right order, and just enjoyed watching the great cinematography.

It's certainly not a bad film, but with Christopher Nolan my expectations are probably fairly high.  He's directed 11 feature films now, but Tenet would not make it into my top 5.