Man it's been awhile, back to the theater for the first 2020 release I've seen on the big screen this year. 'Tenet' the new Christopher Nolan film was to have been one of this summer's big releases, it's $20 million opening weekend would have been considered profoundly disappointing in a normal year, but in Covid times it's pretty good. The kind of smart action spectacle we've come to expect from it's director the movie concerns a government agent (John David Washington, very good) putting together a team (including Robert Pattinson, I didn't hate him) to confront a threat involving time flow manipulation and an exiled Russian oligarch (Kenneth Branagh, scary). Elizabeth Debicki (whose 6 ft 4) is the female lead.
A bit of a different beast, in terms of comparison I'd describe it as a cross between a James Bond film, 'Inception', 'Looper' and 'Primer'. There is some hard sci-fi here repackaged as an espionage film, while I understood the bulk of what was happening on the screen I'm pretty fuzzy on some of the exact details of how things fit together. There is an awful lot of theoretical physics here and in a lesser hands I wouldn't trust that things actually added up, but with Nolan I trust him on this front, no contemporary director is as interested in time and structure as he is.
A finely put together film, though for a movie of this scale I'd say the action sequences were arguably understated. To me most everything worked though the film is lite on its character development, but in its defense this was never intended to be a character focused film. I'm really interested in reading up on the logic of the thing and then seeing it again, and with conditions in the movie world being what they are I expect this picture is up for a very long stay in first run theaters. ***1/2
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