Tenet: Special Edition (DVD)

How does one rate a movie like "Tenet?" Should I rate it based on my own preferences or what I think general audiences should enjoy? It's a polarizing film and I want to be helpful to someone who might want to watch it. I guess I sort of have to just stay true to myself and hope that's helpful. With that I'd say "Tenet" is a good movie. Great? No, but good.The dialog is busy like an episode of "Gilmore Girls." The actors have to spit out their lines rapidly. This makes scenes feel rushed and unnatural. Adding to this problem is how scenes are cut very close to their essence/exposition. While there are establishing shots in some scenes in others there are not. It makes the pacing great but it makes the experience kind of loose. What I mean by that is that it feels like trying to read the pages of a comic book but each page is attached to a car of a passing train. You constantly feel like the story is getting away from you and you get almost fatigued from intense focus. All this not withstanding, whether you like it or not, important scenes will get past you and that is not a great feeling.The scene where the bullets have to be intended to be dropped before they can reverse entropy has similarities with "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure." It's subtle enough that the comparison is not obvious but that bit of silliness is hiding beneath the surface. In "Bill and Ted's" all they needed to do to place something where they needed it was to merely intend on changing it in the past and VOILA it was there! The Protagonist is told to interact with these reversed arms out of instinct. This was reminiscent of another Nolan film "Memento" where a different type of memory is triggered, "know how," when a physical action is done enough (burning the poloroids). While I'm on similarities to other Nolan films the notion of a hiest has become all to common in his movies now. This is the mark of a storied career but may also show difficulty stepping out of his comfort zone when pushing the narrative in his story. I've heard him mention "meeting narrative demands" before in reference to why time is a ubiquitous feature in his films but one's hand is not always forced. Indeed, at this point in his career he is the one pushing time into his films. Don't get me wrong I absolutely love it, but let's not pretend it's not his thing either.The mystery of how the world could come to an end is compelling but hiding the "how" question's answer comes with a cost, namely the price is tension. Because through much of "Tenet" we don't fully understand the threat we can't feel the need to see the Protagonist meet his goals. At one point I thought it was fascinating that I could not comprehend how the Protagonist could stop the end of the world because I didn't even know the problem, I just had to trust that he could stop these forces from the future from doing whatever it is they do. That curiosity is great but I was so far in over my head that I had to let the threat just wash over me because after all I couldn't understand it anyway (this part of the human condition is actually alluded to later). I believe Nolan tried to fix this with a very threatening antagonist and a score that helped me feel the threat as immediate. However I'd liken it to nuclear proliferation in the post Cold War world: I can't be expected to remotely be able to track something like that so I spend no time worrying about it even though I'm told I should be very worried about it (again all of this is alluded to later). In short: rather than the audience hanging on hoping that the antagonist will solve and resolve the problem in swift order we are really reduced to a babe in the woods with our heads buried in the sand even if we want to see the truth. Again, like in "Memento" we just have to believe the world is still there even when our eyes are closed.Now one can blame Nolan for supplementing the confusion with a doom inspired score. It is beyond effective, but I'd say it's too effective. The greatest thing about "Tenet" should be its rewatchability but alas there is a problem here as well: between the mental energy and stress one feels from hearing the gripping music and deep base of engines and distant explosions "Tenet" is stressful to watch. I'm not sure I really can come back to watch it that often. It takes something out of you.When the Protagonist enters the version of the world going in reverse entropy, the blue time frame, he's inverted and we are seeing what he sees. To this point we have seen several temporal interlopers as well as some bullets, vehicles, and many other things in a reversed entropic state. Now we are seeing the Red enter the Blue and the entire world is reversed entropy for our main character. The Protagonist is warned not to come into contact with himself or annihilation. This is a further hint of things to come and is letting the audience know what is ultimately on the line. This is Nolan at his best. He wanted us, the audience, to experience being inverted, not necessarily seeing time going in reverse. This, again, is similar to "Memento" where the narrative is told in reverse but only so we can experience short term memory loss. Additionally this has similarities to "Twin Peaks" and the Red Room. Everything except the main character, Agent Cooper, is reversed. It's a fascinating little cinematic experiment. Well "Tenet" dials that up by about fifty. The best way to experience this movie at this point is to experience what Nolan wants you to experience, he's trying to give you a feeling you've never had before and it is truly edifying to his audience.A note on the time line: The Protagonist is such for several reasons but an important one is that we see the story from his time line. When "Tenet" begins we are in the "red" timeline or more accurately the red entropy. So The Protagonist's timeline runs parallel with the red entropy. When The Protagonist enters the turnstile he goes into the blue entropy but temporally speaking is still forward for the protagonist yet is a reverse timeline. So, like the trains going in two directions at the beginning, so are the two timelines. During all of this the Protagonist is going forward. Simple enough, well, except one thing: the second turnstile. The Protagonist has now re-entered the Red entropy but earlier in the red timeline. So after about half way through the second act The Protagonist's timeline, while still forward, is actually behind where we begun at the start. This means things are still being manipulated by a force in the future. What is that force:WARNING SPOILERSThat force is The Protagonist himself. As it turns out the movie "Tenet" is about one big temporal pencer devised by The Protagonist. We are told much of this at the very end. What is really interesting though is that the antagonist is dying and is going to take the world with him. The Protagonist passed a test at the beginning where he was willing to die to save others. This played out with the two trains going in opposite directions while a fight was on for the silver suicide pill that will come in later.So, as it turns out, The Protagonist is named as such for several reasons: we are following only his timeline, "Tenet" itself is about his temporal pencer strategy, and finally his unique position makes him the only possible protagonist as no one else has access to all the elements of the world. On that final point he is speaking to a character that asks him a question and The Protagonist responds, "divided knowledge" to keep him in line but in truth no one knows enough to be the protagonist but The Protagonist himself. Finally we learn that the protagonist is also posterity which is future generations. The final scene is him wrapping up all the loose ends and he did so from the beginning to the end.

Not that I'm smart, mind you. But I was smart enough to know a) much of the technical & scientific concepts here are way over my head but b) I can still follow what the smart people are doing. It's like listening to Carl Sagan; I have no idea how he knows what he knows, but I know what he's saying is based in fact.That said, I thought I was going to dislike this movie, or be bored by it or disappointed in it. I have all of Nolan's movies and none of them is better than this. This is a sleeper. People won't figure out how incredibly good this is for years.It was all about the visuals for me until the one-hour point. Then, suddenly, it turned. I thought, Oh, this is where it's going to start to suck, like so many other viewers have written. But no. For another hour and 25 minutes, I couldn't leave my seat. I rewound it several times to make sure I caught what it looked like had just happened, just to make sure.This is Nolan's mind, unleashed. And because he took years to develop this in his head, there is a little too much here for it to be perfect. But I'm just glad he let me come along for the ride because, by the end, I was gobsmacked.I really believe that if someone says it's not that good or not Nolan's best, they watched it too casually, or maybe they didn't even understand it, even though they thought they understood the concepts. But I'm betting they didn't.Maybe if I wanted to point out some flaws I could talk about the editing, or the length of some scenes. But there were no flaws in script or acting. I was disappointed about one thing, which you might find funny. There's a teaser that's been airing for months, before the movie was mothballed because of the virus. Robert Pattinson is in a room with JD Washington, expressing a little doubt about whether or not something will work or happen. I can't remember his straight line right now, but JD says, "Well, try to keep up," in a facetious tone with a big smile. That's just a 2-second gem, but they took it out of the movie! Or at least the digital version I watched here.I bought the package with the added features, so I'll check to see if it's on DVD. But as I said, it's a small thing.And yes, the sound is muffled. I had to turn my computer and my television up to the highest volume in order to hear at all, & I watch with captions because of a hearing problem in one ear, so even then I didn't catch all the dialog. I'm about to get a Blutooth speaker, so I'll hook that up when it arrives and set it next to my couch so I can listen more closely.Other filmmakers and critics actually have mentioned the sound mix as well and I read an article by one of them, which Nolan also read and commented on. I'm not sure what he'll do about it, but maybe WB will do a re-issue of this film with an enhanced soundtrack.Of course, if I'd been able to see it in a theater, as I had planned to do, maybe the sound would be better. I saw Ford v. Ferrari in the IMAX theater at Seattle Center before the pandemic and that was SO worth it. But what if the sound mix on this movie is just as bad in the theater? I've read a few complaints indicating that.So, you don't need me to tell you the plot or really comment on the actors or the screenplay. It is what others have already said, except this: it isn't a spy thriller. That's a plot line, but it's not THE plot line. It doesn't conform in any way to any spy movie I've seen. The Protagonist exists independent of any agency. He never phones his boss for instructions or receives Top Secret documents or even is confronted by some phalanx of ideological bad guys with a network.He's on a journey and it takes him to dark places. There are bad guys. There is intrigue. But it's more about physics, and how they can be bent to achieve an end result, whether good or evil. Why it happens to JD in particular is not clear at all to me.And it doesn't end. It stops. There is more intrigue looming out there. Not sequel-worthy stuff, but more resembling real life, where nothing is ever neatly tied up in a bow while life goes on.It never resolves and that's just fine with me. I mean, do you remember the ending of Inception? or Memento? Or even Insomnia? Tying bows is not what Nolan in about. There's always something at the end of the tunnel that leads to the Batcave, but it's not what you expect.The important thing to say is that this movie is brilliant, but you might have to watch it a dozen times to appreciate it fully. There are some production mistakes, like this scene where Pattinson is lying down & then they cut to another angle and he's sitting up. There's no excuse for a bad edit like that, and it startled me & made me lose track, so I had to back it up in order to understand what they're talking about.In a movie so engrossing, every little misstep will be noticed and potentially ruin the viewer's concentration. So maybe I shouldn't have given it five stars, but if it mattered, i'd only deduct 1/10th of a star for a boo-boo. And if I'd been the editor, I would have made a few different cuts, but I'm not the editor (I have been a film editor), so I'm leaving it alone. Making a movie, bad or good, is incredibly hard from a pre- and post-production standard. This movie came together as if Nolan himself was describing it to you in person.I suspect it will be in the running for Best Musical Score, and if JD isn't nominated for Best Actor, I don't know what's wrong with the world.Nolan should also get Best Director for this. I often think about how scenes could have been directed better, but managing to tie all these ideas together cohesively and irresistibly would take God himself. I was humbled by the intricacy of the scenes, how he directed them, the choices he made. On many levels this is the best movie I've ever seen, though it won't stand up against East of Eden or Citizen Kane in the long run.It's 1 a.m and I'm writing this on a post-TENET buzz, but I believe I've written an honest review, based on the strengths and weaknesses of the movie. Buy it, rent it, watch it. It's absolutely worth it, incomparable and entertaining.

is a 2020 science fiction action-thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, who produced it with Emma Thomas. A co-production between the United Kingdom and the United States, it stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh. The plot follows a secret agent (Washington) as he manipulates the flow of time to prevent World War III.Nolan took more than five years to write the screenplay after deliberating about Tenet's central ideas for over a decade. Pre-production began in late 2018, casting in March 2019, and principal photography lasted three months in Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States, from May to November. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shot on 70 mm and IMAX. Scenes of time manipulation were filmed both backwards and forwards. Upwards of one hundred vessels and thousands of extras were used.Delayed three times because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tenet was released in the United Kingdom on August 26, 2020, and United States on September 3, 2020, in IMAX, 35 mm, and 70 mm. It was the first Hollywood tent-pole to open in theatres after the pandemic shutdown, and grossed $362 million worldwide, making it the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2020. However, it failed to break even due to its costly production and marketing budget, losing distributor Warner Bros. Pictures as much as $100 million. The film received generally favourable reviews from critics on Metacritic, with Rotten Tomatoes saying it had "all the cerebral spectacle audiences expect from a Christopher Nolan production."Plot (WARNING MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS)A CIA agent, the "Protagonist", participates in an undercover operation at a Kyiv opera house. His life is saved by a masked soldier with a red trinket, who "un-fires" a bullet through a hostile gunman. After seizing an artefact, the Protagonist is captured by mercenaries. He endures torture before consuming cyanide. He awakens to learn that the cyanide was a test of his loyalty; his team has been killed, and the artefact lost.The Protagonist joins a secret organization called Tenet. A scientist shows him bullets with "inverted" entropy, which allows them to move backwards through time. She believes that they are manufactured in the future, and a weapon exists that can wipe out the past. Aided by a local contact Neil, the Protagonist traces the bullets to arms dealer Priya Singh. He discovers that she is a member of Tenet; her cartridges were purchased and inverted by Russian oligarch Andrei Sator.The Protagonist approaches Sator's estranged wife Kat, an art appraiser, who authenticated a Goya drawing forged by a man named "Arepo", which Sator thereafter purchased for $9 million from Arepo; Sator uses the drawing to blackmail her and keep her under his control. The Protagonist plots to steal the drawing with Neil from a free port facility in Oslo Airport. There they find a machine, a "turnstile", and fend off two masked men. Priya explains that the turnstile can invert the entropy of objects and people, and the masked men were the same person.In the Amalfi Coast, Kat introduces the Protagonist to Sator, but learns that the drawing is intact. The three go boating, and Kat attempts to drown Sator, but the Protagonist saves him. The Protagonist offers to help Sator retrieve a case, which, he says, contains Plutonium-241. In Tallinn, the Protagonist and Neil ambush an armoured convoy and steal the case, which contains the artefact lost in Kyiv. They are ambushed by an inverted Sator, who holds Kat hostage. The Protagonist gives Sator an empty case, and he retreats. The Protagonist saves Kat but is captured and taken to Sator's warehouse.The inverted Sator shoots Kat with an inverted round, while the normal Sator demands the location of the artefact; the Protagonist gives him false information. Tenet operatives led by Ives rescue the Protagonist while Sator escapes. The group take Kat through Sator's turnstile to invert her, reversing the effect of the round. The Protagonist returns to the ambush site and chases Sator. His vehicle is overturned, and Sator sets it on fire; the Protagonist is saved by Ives' team again. Neil reveals that he is a member of Tenet.The Protagonist and Neil travel back in time to the free port in Oslo. There the Protagonist fights his past self and enters the turnstile to revert himself, followed by Neil and Kat. Priya explains that the artefacts are parts of an "algorithm", which Sator is assembling, capable of catastrophically inverting entropy.Kat reveals that Sator is dying from pancreatic cancer. He will trigger the algorithm with a dead man's switch, believing that the world should die with him. Kat believes that Sator will kill himself during their vacation, when they were last happy together. The Protagonist, Neil, Kat, and the Tenet forces invert back to that day, so Kat can delay Sator's death, while Tenet secures the algorithm.Tenet tracks the algorithm to Sator's hometown of Stalsk-12 in Northern Siberia. In a "temporal pincer movement", red team troops move forward in time, while the blue team troops move backward. The Protagonist and Ives are aided by a masked corpse of a blue-team trooper with a red trinket on his backpack after seeing him dying in reverse. In Vietnam, Kat boards Sator's yacht and kills him, as the Protagonist and Ives secure the algorithm.The Protagonist, Neil, and Ives break up the algorithm and part ways. The Protagonist notices the trinket on Neil's rucksack. Neil reveals that he was recruited by the Protagonist years in the future and that this mission is the end of a long friendship. Priya attempts to have Kat assassinated, but is killed by the Protagonist, who has realized that he is the future mastermind behind Tenet.I always love a Nolan movie from Memento to Dunkirk and now Tenet. On the first watch, you may get a little lost but this will only bring you back another time and realize how simple the story really is.

I am determined not to provide any spoilers, and would only suggest that you work it out for yourself. You possibly will find the opening 15 minutes to be a little jaw dropping and you may well think to yourself, "What the hell is going on?" Stay with it, do not take your eyes off it of nip out for a cup of coffee, just watch listen and learn. You will need to be on the ball and intelligent enough to even begin to understand the nuances of what is happening. However, if you are successful and understand what this film is saying you will be very proud of your self.Some Actors deserve an extra thank you; Kenneth Branagh is the embodiment of the psychology of the role he is playing and if he does not win an Oscar then I will be extremely surprised and disgusted. John David Washington was, in my opinion, the character who by his excellence in acting drew the viewer through this incredible tale. In fact, he made all the difference and is another who deserves an Oscar. Any review would be for nothing without a strong mention for Elizabeth Debicki who provided an exceptionally balanced performance that acted as a reference point to all that was happening. Another Oscar I hope.Tenet is a film I shall watch a few more times in the future, or past, and I am certain that I will learn each time.Thank you Christopher Nolan, you are a genious.

No spoilers.This is definitely a Marmite movie, you'll either love it or hate it. Doubt there's any shades of grey here and I can't see anyone being undecided either way.This movie is based around the theory of time travel, but done in an innovative way. This focuses on several characters lives as they battle through time. There is an innovative way of using time as a weapon, but I hope nobody repeats this aspect.For the best chance of following this movie, avoid distractions because you'll need to concentrate on this.I have to admit that I lost concentration half way through and then endured the rest of the movie. I did not enjoy this movie because of this and don't plan to watch again.I'm sure that I will not be the only one to lose the plot or hate the innovative use of time.I gave it 3 stars because of the normal parts of the movie, cinematography, acting, action etc.

This is a review of the All Region Blu-ray, released by Warner Bros on 14 December 2020. The quality is excellent, and it comes with a bonus disc of special features ~ great value for money.British-born director Christopher Nolan clearly has a ‘thing’ about time: the effects it can have on people’s conscious and unconscious mind; how time affects reality; how time is relative. It is a thread running through so many of his films, from ‘Memento’(2000), a Neo-Noir which deals with murder and amnesia; through the thriller ‘Insomnia’(2002), set in Alaskan summer and it’s eternal daylight; Sci-fi drama ‘Inception’(2010) where dreams and reality are manipulated; ‘Interstellar’(2014) dealing with the effects of space travel on time. Even ‘Dunkirk’(2017) uses different time frames running parallel, to cover the action of May-June 1940.In his latest block-buster, which weighs in at a whopping 2 hours 30 minutes, Nolan again makes time the centre-piece of his plot. It is another Sci-Fi thriller, and again is written by Nolan himself, using ideas he has been working on, literally, for years. But if you struggled with the notions of time in the notoriously complex but scientifically accurate ‘Interstellar’, or the notoriously controversial “Dunkirk’, you are in for a torrid time here. Because the timelines here are running forward and backwards, sometimes separately, sometimes concurrently, and the complexity is such, you probably need to watch this film with a calculator in your hand!Whilst I followed both the 2 earlier films pretty well, at first viewing, here, I was totally flummoxed quite early on. Eventually, I just decided to sit back and enjoy the ride. And the ride is pretty good.The film is firstly, VERY handsomely filmed, with magnificent scope and sweep. We get a world tour of good-looking places, all beautifully photographed. We also get some seriously brilliant set-pieces. I would recommend especially a spectacular scene with a cargo plane, and another with a pair of F50s, the world’s fastest sail race boats, racing in the Solent (standing in for the Amalfi coast!); and also a bungee jump to make the eyes water. There are several equally spectacular car chases, armed excursions of various sorts, and fights.Former American footballer and actor John David Washington, who came to prominence in the mordantly funny ‘BlacKkKlansman’(2018) makes an attractive, muscular and effective hero, surrounded by several excellent British stars, including a viscerally unpleasant Kenneth Branagh, a very couth Michael Caine, and a nicely understated Robert Pattinson, making up for his serious thespian own-goal, in ‘The Lighthouse’(2019).So, did I like ‘Tenet’? Yes-ish. It probably needs at least another viewing, but at first sight, I don’t rate it as highly as several of Nolan’s other works. I thought it was slightly over-clever, at the cost of understanding, and also a bit chilly and un-involving. Moreover, I was also left asking ‘Why?’, rather loudly. So, just 4 big, brutal Stars.

I really enjoyed Tenet despite all the valid criticisms levelled at it (which I did not read until after I saw it, so I went in cold). Yes, I had to have the subtitles on but I seem to have to do that a lot these days but this was 100% required for me this time. I understood the plot, I understood what the characters were trying to achieve, I understood their explanations of how they were going to achieve it. But when all that played out on screen it was at times unfathomable what I was looking at. It was such a high concept that I just let go and said, OK, I trust that if this happened this is what it would look like, my brain cannot process it but it's great to watch it go down. And for me this was not something that made me dislike this film, I can honestly say that this made it a unique experience, totally mind boggling. A bit slow in the first half, a bit bland with the characters but dang unique overall. Like being forced to drive a way too powerful sports car with too may buttons, gadgets, flashing lights and claxons, someone jammed the accelerator and you can't stop it or get out, someone's yelling instructions but you can't hear them over the noise. Yeh, it was like that. Some of us like that sort of thing. Knocked a star off because the dialog track even on Blu Ray with a 7.1 sound system was too far down in the mix, no question and because of the lack of memorable characters except for Kenneth B but he seemed totally miscast.