Tenet (2020)
Time runs out.
Time for one from the back log. It’s been sitting there for a while. Honestly, it’s been sitting there for too long, and now that it’s on a service I don’t have to pay individually for the movie there’s no better time than now to get it before it disappears back into the pay-to-watch land. I’ve been told a lot of things about it -primarily to be ready to be confused. Now, I’ve seen some stuff, so let’s see just how bad it can really be. It’ll open doors good and bad, so you best remember it for later, tonight is Tenet.
An undercover squad busts in on some terrorist action, finding their VIP and making sure he’s got the package they are looking for. Something people like to make dirty bombs with, from the sounds of it - but everything gets real complicated pretty fast, and when one of the agents gets capture and takes what he thinks is a cyanide pill, he wakes up later only to find out it’s really just a pretend your dead drug and he finds himself with a new job. Seems there’s more at stake then a nuclear device - you’ve got to think four dimensional for this one, as this new weapon might just be temporal and be quite world-ending. Our lead has a lot to catch up on as he tracks down whose to blame for the danger.
Actors do a pretty splendid job here. At times, I’ll give it to you that they aren’t always a hundred percent knocking it out of the park - but some of that might be the rather complex situations that are happening in the plot making it somewhat rough. The fact that some of the stuff they deliver is not only straight-faced but clear cut like a professional is talking about it does speak to the acting quite well - just know that like any movie some folks (usually the main ones) do better than others. I would say that most folks wouldn’t find a whole lot that they would complain about from the acting - outside of perhaps maybe the love story seeming a bit meh or unsold. Not sure if I’d blame the chemistry or just the plot getting busy and it feeling perhaps a tad bit forced to make it go where it wants.
Characters are alright. I’d say there isn’t really a whole ton going on in the character development batch. I guess you could suggest the “strong independant woman” route for the weapon smugglers wife, but I feel that would be a bit disingenuous given it’s more of a vindictive revenge route more than it is her suddenly becoming a way more capable character by the end. The main character understands more by the end, but I wouldn’t say that he feels like he’s in a different spot as a character at all. Relations do develop some between characters, and things get to be elaborated on by the end, but oddly enough I wouldn’t really call this an acting or character movie when it comes to what’s going to draw someone in.
Team good guy
This movie, by and large, is the time travel. That’s what’s going to draw people in is that element and how everything plays around it. Here, it’s presentation is actually kind of neat -but also largely what confuses people the most i think. See, it’s not just go jump in a machine and pop out at a different time - it’s more like a VHS. You pop it in and hit play, all is normal. You pop it in and hit reverse, and you are still normal but everything else is going in reverse. If I remember right, the term they use is “inverted” for all of these shenanigans. Instead of the bullet going out of the gun and into the wall, an inverted bullet has “already been shot” and so it goes from the wall back into the gun. That part is kind of simple enough to get, but what makes it confusing I would wager is when you get the interaction between forward and reverse segments at the same time.
Now, the effects to back this up are pretty dang great. Yes, at times it can look a bit cartoonish, but a bunch of it is practical stuff as well. The backwards while forwards and other way around lead to a lot of interesting bits when it comes to fights, and you can imagine there’s probably a good deal of wire work involved. The action is fun - although again like I mentioned, with some of the flips and pushes and the likes going on it can feel a little goofy. The final section is where they really let fly with everything and it gets well and truly nuts. Explosions, backwards, forwards, splits between multiple characters in different spots - I wouldn’t hold it against someone to want to watch it twice to get a better understanding of what the heck is going on.
Audio does it’s job, balance is fine, and the music is gone from my head as is typical. Line deliveries are good enough, and you won’t end up being at a loss for folks talking unless it’s just having a hard time with understanding some of the scientific words they throw about. For the thinking person, there’s a whole lot about time travel and fate, and i suppose you could find some stuff in there about how much is too far or stuff like that. Time travel is a bit messy - as there’s always a lot of different spots where things could in theory be hole type elements. How did the initial time travel happen? Can things be changed? the movie does do a pretty good job of sprinkling out various little breadcrumbs that by the end of the movie you go “oh, right, that thing” like you would have ever guessed a detail like that without it coming up again by the end. It also does a very good job of literally spelling out all the mechanics - even if at surface level - so as long as you are listening and watching along you really shouldn’t be too horribly lost, unless you start looking for those sink holes.
Reverse Uno card
I honestly didn’t find this confusing. Yeah, if I try to think about the inital zero-point time travel moment, it’s a little bit “huh?” but for the most part it does exactly what it says it does. I do enjoy the twist on time travel being this forward/reverse thing, as it provides plenty of fun effects scenes to play with. The plot facilitates itself, although it can feel a bit nuts at times.