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Welcome to the Rob renaissance, baby!

This Review is spoiler free.

The first batch of customers came out of screen one after Tenet on opening day looking puzzled and annoyed, a couple wearing matching yellow face masks gestures me over and asks if they could talk to the manager. Uh oh. I ask my boss what the couple from screen one wanted earlier, apparently the sound in screen one had become distorted and warped. I thought to myself: Man, Nolan has really lost it, he wants the audience to be totally in the dark with this one.

A few days later I was talking with a co-worker, “So”, she finishes pouring a new bag of popcorn into one of the heaters, “Have you watched Tenet yet?” “No” I answer as I wipe down one of the sanitation stations in the foyer. “I’m going down this weekend to see it at Waterloo.” “You’ll need a degree in physics to understand it, I tell ya”. The sound bite from Dave Curtis over at Small Screen that you have probably seen on the advertisements had been rattling around my head like a penny in one of those spiral wishing wells that you can find in food courts: Tenet is a must-see film on the biggest screen you can get to and the loudest sound system you can find (preferably an IMAX screen).

I’ll be honest guys, I think my all-consuming love for Robert Patterson blinded me from seeing the weak aspects of this film. I do not think the plot is that confusing considering that it has all the basic archetypes of a Nolan film. The protagonist (John David Washington) is a highly skilled…assassin? Spy? Soldier? All of the above. He was rather good, but a lot of his punchlines landed pretty mildly, though his acting and stunt capabilities where awesome. His quirky and intelligent friend Christopher Nolan, oh, I mean, Neil (Robert Patterson) (C’mon people! He is even wearing Nolan’s signature look: Long coat, suit and scarf!). Whilst I enjoyed watching our tall queen Kat (Elizabeth Debicki, who Is 6 ft 3 according to Wikipedia) wear nice clothes, be in nice cars, have a fantastic super yacht and in general be a tall icon her character does fall into the trap that a lot of Nolan characters fall into: being the so called emotional centre of the film despite being undeveloped and underused. The audience barely gets to know her, she is in a toxic relationship with the central antagonist of the film named Andrei (Kenneth Branagh), she is an art dealer and she loves her son…okay? And? It seems like she is only defined by her family and her job as opposed to herself. To tell you the truth, I had to do a quick search up of the characters names, highly forgettable.

The action pieces and the locations where outstanding though, I cannot fault that. The plane crash was great to see on the big screen, and my favourite scene was the car chase going backwards and forwards at the same time. I think this film greatly improves once the characters become inverted, this really gives the cinematographer, fight choreographers, stunt coordinators and the director a chance to really show us what they have got. I think this film could have been improved by having more cool backwards action sequences. It never really got as good as when the protagonist and Neil are in their car and they hear a strange language through the walkie talkie. The protagonist looks to Neil and says, “I thought you could speak Estonian”. To which Neil replies “It’s not Estonian, It’s backwards!” the audience really enjoyed moments like that. Nolan never disappoints on the action in my opinion, You can unplug your mind and watch the explosions and then plug it back in to hear some exposition that is gonna come in handy about 40 minutes later.

So, should you see this film on an IMAX screen with a banging sound system? Yes, I think the image has been squeezed ever so slightly to fit standard screens, but even across different modes of speakers the sound has been scrunched beyond belief, everyday I hear complaints about the sound from customers. Do you need a degree in physics to understand this film? No. Should you take some paracetamol to rid you of the unavoidable headache you will have after seeing this film? Absolutely.