What’s It About
A secret agent embarks on a dangerous, time-bending mission to prevent the start of World War III. Armed with only one word—Tenet—and fighting for the survival of the entire world, the Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real-time. Not time travel. Inversion.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
There was a lot of secrecy regarding this movie long before Warner Bros. released it. Writer Christopher Nolan would drop teasers occasionally to peak our interest while never letting anyone know what the hell Tenet was or what it meant. Months later, with a pandemic going on, it was released in theaters, unfortunately to very little fanfare. Not because it’s a bad film but because of Covid19. Depending on where you are located, determined if you were given a chance to see it in a theater. If you did get a chance to see it, you know the secret. Tenet is a dramatic science-fiction spectacle. The movie doesn’t waste any time throwing you in the middle of a situation you have no idea about. Furthermore, once the first scene ends, there’s a lot of downtime in regards to action. So, in my opinion, Tenet is more drama than action, no matter what the trailer leads you to believe. That’s not a bad thing, just a more accurate observation. As for Tenet being more of a drama, that’s a good and bad thing. Why? Because there is so much information to absorb within the two and a half hour runtime. I stated earlier the film starts with a huge action scene. After that, there’s a lot of narrative exposition that continues until the end of the movie. Any other time, I would have complained about how much dialog there was is this film, but after the movie was over, I felt like I still needed another hour to understand what the hell Tenet was entirely about. Don’t get me wrong, they explained Tenet ALL THROUGH THE MOVIE, and having to watch it after they explained it was both helpful and an insult on my intelligence. Needless to say, no matter how much I might say I understood the Tenet concept, there was so much about it that left me wondering if I still missed something. If Tenet were a college course, I would have been happy to walk away with a “C+” and never look back. As it stands, comparing it to something would make it a combination of several films with a dash of originality mixed in. It felt like a bond film but more governmental. It felt like Mission Impossible but without mission briefing or the high-tech costumes and masks. Ultimately, Tenet “feels” like a lot of movies. Still, it is a very thought-provoking original concept that will either excite you or bore you to death depending on where you stand on dialog heavy science-fiction films. I think they did a fantastic job with the script, acting, and overall presentation. The biggest downfall, other than being released during a pandemic, is the false implications that Tenet is an action film. Yes, it has action in it, but those scenes are far and few between; a big one initially, a few small ones sprinkled in the middle, and the climax. That’s not that many for a 150-minute movie. If it weren’t for the interesting plot and story, I would be screaming false advertising.
OUR RATING – A NEGOTIABLE 7.5
MEDIA
- Genre – Science Fiction
- Street date
- Digital/DVD/Blu-Ray/4K– December 15th, 2020
- Video – 1080p
- Screen size – 2.20:1
- Sound – English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, French Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1
- Subtitles – English SDH, Spanish, French
Extras
- Looking at the World in a New Way (HD, 75 min): Broken into thirteen segments that can be watched individually, this exhaustive making-of documentary looks at every aspect of the production, and it features various cast & crew interviews discussing the plot’s themes mixed with tons of BTS footage throughout.
- Trailers (HD): A set of four theatrical previews.