TENET movie review by Movie Review Mom

MOVIE TITLE: TENET

RATING: PG-13

LENGTH: 2 hours, 30 minutes

Movie Review Mom GRADE: A

IN A NUTSHELL:

Director Christopher Nolan serves a cerebral plate of action and sci-fi intrigue, perfect for those who loved the brain-scratchers Inception and Interstellar. The director is a huge James Bond fan, which shows in the film. He intentionally did NOT watch any Bond movies while he worked on this film but chose to rely more on the feeling he remembered he got from watching them.

At a budget of $205 million, this is Christopher Nolan’s most expensive film and the first major studio film to be released during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is one of those movies you have to watch twice to fully appreciate. The more you understand it, the more you appreciate it.

TIPS FOR PARENTS:

Brutal violence and destruction
Terrorism
Profanity, including 1 F-bomb
Kids will be very confused

THEMES:

Cause and effect
Instinct
The law of entropy refers to the idea that all things move toward disorder.
Reality

THINGS I LIKED:

The movie starts off with a bang…literally.
I love movies that play around with the concept of time. The working title for this film was “Merry Go Round.”
John David Washington was an athlete in college, so his physicality for the action scenes was completely believable. He said he could hardly run for a month after filming. I thought he was excellent in the movie Blackkklansman. You can see my review of that film here. Did you know he’s Denzel Washington’s son? Sometimes he even sounds like his dad in this movie.
I think James Pattinson is a very good actor and was overlooked for his outstanding performance in The Lighthouse. You can see my review of that film here. Christopher Nolan offered him the role because he was impressed with Pattinson’s performance in Good Time. He refuses to use his own London accent and says he would feel like a fraud of an actor to speak like himself. He also said that the secrecy surrounding this project was so strict that he and co-star John David Washington were only allowed to read the script in a locked room at the actual Warner Brothers studios. Even worse, actor Michael Caine was only allowed to read the pages of the script that had his lines on them. He had absolutely no idea what the movie was about until its release!
Be impressed with the effects because no green screens were used. To make the inversion scenes, director Christopher Nolan shot each scene twice: forward and backward. Yes, that means that the cast how to learn how to speak backward! Kenneth Branagh had to learn how to speak Russian backward! But wait, those stunts also had to be performed backward!
Speaking of Kenneth Branagh, he was excellent.
Be equally impressed with the soundtrack because it was pieced together online from the individual recordings of the musicians in their homes after the Coronavirus prevented them from practicing or performing together. This is actually the first Christopher Nolan movie NOT to be scored by Hans Zimmer. Zimmer wasn’t available to do this film, so he suggested his friend Ludwig Goransson.
In order to get that unique sound from the villain, composer Ludwig Goransson recorded and tweaked Christopher Nolan’s own breathing.
I loved seeing the car chase scenes filmed in Estonia. I visited the beautiful city of Tallinn. They used the Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn as the fictional Oslo Freeport. The opera house scene was also shot in Tallinn at a venue that was falling apart so much that the crew had to practically rebuild it.
Elizabeth Debicki was outstanding. The first time I ever saw her was in Guardians of the Galaxy (Theatrical) where she looked like a real goddess. Christopher Nolan offered her the role without auditioning but she insisted on auditioning to show herself she could do it.
That catamaran scene was crazy. It’s an F50 foiling catamaran, the fastest racing class in history, reaching speeds over 50 knots (more than 60 miles per hour.)
I love that the title of the movie is a palindrome: TENET, which is perfect for a movie that illustrates things going forward and backward. The word “TENET” actually originated from the Sator Square, a puzzle that spells 5 words in every direction when rotated: Tenet, Sator, Arepo, Opera, and Rotas. All of those words appear in the movie as people’s names or locations.
I love it when a director uses carefully thought-out details. For example, in this film, the color red is used to indicate time going forward. Blue is used to show the time inversion. The color motif is actually based on the Doppler effect. The musical score also changes to indicate the inverted time. But wait…there’s more. In the final battle scene, the red team and blue team both have ten minutes to complete their missions. That’s TEN forwards and TEN backward. Wow. Did your head just explode?
Non-stop action and pacing.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:

I remember the first time I saw the trailer about a year ago. I had no idea what the movie was going to be about. Some viewers will still be very confused and wonder what the heck they just saw.
Christopher Nolan went to great lengths to film scenes in IMAX, so it’s a shame that so few people will actually be able to see the movie in IMAX in a theater.
Sometimes it’s hard to hear what people are saying, which makes it even more difficult to understand what’s happening. Watch this film with subtitles if you can!
The soundtrack was often overbearing with the potential to give you a headache by the end of the movie.

INTERESTING LINES:

“We’re trying to prevent World War 3.” – Barbara (Clemence Poesy) “Nuclear Holocaust?” – The Protagonist (John David Washington) “No, something worse.” – Barbara
“But what does your heart tell you?” – The Protagonist
“We live in a twilight world.” – The Protagonist (John David Washington)

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