Not as solid as I hoped. It's confusing for sure, but they could have done so so much more with this concept and world. But they didn't. It has left us with a story that is interesting, yet unrelatable. Things move way too fast and I would have preferred a longer runtime because it is that intriguing. And while the ending is great, the way that Nolan tries to merge the two viewpoints isn't done well. Leaving me feeling like my dad when he watches Transformers (2007) and asks who is who.

It needed to be simplified a little more because everything else is amazing. The effects, the overarching story, the acting. The music, however, is terrible and overblown to give a sense of action when there isn't enough happening. The only part where it worked well was in the final fight, but even then it needed to be quieter.

The cinematography is good as always, but I feel it is lacking compared to Nolan's previous work.

When it comes to action and the draw to this movie, the reversal shots. They deliver, but they are too and far between. It gives us great scenes of reversal action, then one drawn-out segment at the end that doesn't feel rewarding as like I said before, it isn't merged well.

This movie may grow on me more after a second viewing, but it left me in a state that I don't wish to see it again any time soon. It is not fun enough to see again, it is not engaging enough to associate and learn from. Something that Nolan has done well at in the past is his ability to leave questions with the audience after they finish his films. Here, it just provides answers and left me unsatisfied in that regard.

**7/10**

When coming up with the idea for this film, I imagine Nolan asking himself: can you take a Roger Moore era Bond plot, up the amount of sci-fi and dial down the camp? Yes, you can, but this isn’t exactly the way to do it.

Pros:
- I love it when directors aim big. Give me someone who tries something as ambitious as this over the average blockbuster anyday.
- Directing & cinematography, as is to be expected from a Nolan film at this point.
- Score. Especially during the opening scene and inversion stuff.
- Action sequences, especially the car chase.
- Most of the acting is solid. JDW is excellent, Robert Pattinson and Elizabeth Debicki are great.

Cons:
- This film has been edited to shit. It’s got pacing that’s all over the place, and there’s a rushed sense to it all. Scenes aren’t allowed to breathe, exposition is delivered so rapidly that you barely have any time to process it. I’m lucky to have a brain that can keep up with difficult plot mechanics, and yes, I could follow what was happening all the way through, but it all makes for a film that’s inaccessible for most people on their first watch. Unfortunately, it definitely doesn’t feel like the film that mainstream audiences are going to embrace during the time of a pandemic.
- Just like with _Dunkirk_, Nolan once again deliberately chooses to not flesh out his characters, resulting in a film that feels emotionally shallow. It’s very hard to connect with the film on a personal level in that regard. Take _Inception_, for example. Even when you strip away all the amazing stuff from that film (rotating cities, hotel fight), there’s still an emotional core about a man who’s been estranged from his kids because of what happened to his wife. There’s a reason why we want Leonardo DiCaprio to succeed at implanting this idea into Cillian Murphy’s head. _Tenet_ has none of that. Who’s the protagonist? Who’s Robert Pattinson? What’s this agency they’re working for? We just don’t know.
- The sound mix. The dialogue just isn’t very clear for a lot of the film. Why they didn’t use ADR for some scenes (especially when people wear masks, as that’s easy to edit around) is beyond me. I honestly started to read the subtitles after the opening scene.
- Kenneth Branagh. He’s a great actor, but his hammy performance feels like it comes out of a different movie (a campy Roger Moore era Bond movie, that is)
- I found the climax to be uninspired, and a little dull.
- Minor point, but there’s some really unsubtle foreshadowing during the fight at the airport ([Spoiler] when you have a character unmask an inverted person offscreen, and they look surprised, who do you think it’s going to be? [/spoiler])

Overall, I feel like this could’ve easily been an 8 if the film was about 30 minutes longer, thereby taking its time to flesh out the characters, world and mechanics of the plot. It almost feels like WB forced Nolan to trim a lot of scenes in order to get a shorter runtime, but that’s also doubtful as WB isn’t beyond releasing movies that are way shittier at 3 hours (_It: Chapter 2_). Besides, he’s Christopher Nolan, so I assume he has final cut. As it stands, I just cannot recommend it.

5/10

It was a long time since I watched a new blockbuster movie and, mostly for personal reasons, even longer since I actually reviewed a movie, blockbuster or not.

I guess this movie is not the most simple one to pick to get my reviews/blogging back on track but there’s not that much new movies to chose from this year with the pandemic and all.

I have to say that I approached this movie with some hesitation and perhaps with an assumption that I wouldn’t like it since I have an aversion towards time travel in movies and books. It is more often than not that the author gets it more or less spectacularly wrong and it turns into a mess.

Well, I have to say that, in my mind, this movie was a bit of a mess. I felt confused and found it difficult to follow the various twists more than once. Also, at least in the beginning, the parts about bullets jumping up in your hand instead of falling out because the bullets where travelling backwards in time sounded somewhat unbelievable to me. I can accept something travelling backwards in time but for such a bullet to jump up into someone’s hand, seemingly on command, no I do not think that’s very believable at all.

Once I had watched the entire movie to the end, then finally, some of the first parts started to make sense. Personally I don’t like that I spend a large part of the movie wondering what the f… even if it (mostly) becomes clear towards the end.

However, I have to say, it was a quite cool mess.

First of all, I quite like the main protagonist. Whether he’s traveling forwards or backwards he kicks ass and he’s intelligent. He is very much a James Bond type of character which I like.

There’s also a shitload of action in this movie and it is both well done as well as cool. Of course, with the budget this movie had I would really be disappointed if there wasn’t good special effects in it. However, one thing that made the effects and action to stand out in this movie compared was this concept that for some people, and objects as well, time moved backwards. Watching some of the larger scenes where some explosions where actually explosions and some where implosions. Cars moving both forwards and backwards in car chases etc. etc. I have opinions about the plausibility of that but it looked cool at least.

For me the enjoyment of this movie was the main protagonist which I liked and the cool action. The story itself and its rather convoluted (but original I have to say that) time travel concept, well I’m not sure I was (am) too trilled about that except for the fact that it allowed these rather original special effects.

I believe Tenet is very underrated. This movie is just too good! The soundtrack, the action, the plot, the acting, the cinematography, and the fact that CGI wasn't really involved much!

Yet it was indeed challenging to understand. However, after watching Dark, I didn't face much difficulty in understanding the plot, as both have a lot in common.

Nolan's movies aren't there to satisfy you, they are more of something to be felt. I loved Tenet as much as I loved his other movies...

Been a fan of Christopher Nolan's films but this one didn't quite do it for me. One, confusing story that was hard to follow at times (I got the gist), but beyond that, wasn't terribly entertained. Acting was shaky, Pattison was fine but really disappointed with John David Washington, though he's not helped by cliched dialogue. IDK, didn't hate it at all and maybe will revisit it one day, but this is easily Nolan's weakest film to date. **3.0/5**