The ‘Tenet’ Reviews Are In And They’re… Pretty Mixed, Sadly

Tenet, the new film by Christopher Nolan, is the biggest blockbuster of the year almost by proxy — all the other major studio hitters have been taken out by the coronavirus pandemic, relegated to streaming services or pushed back indefinitely.

But even if Tenet wasn’t the last tentpole standing, it would still be extremely hyped. The new film by Christopher Nolan — he of The Dark Knight and Inception fame — was always going to attract headlines, and his latest attracted even more by virtue of being so mysterious. The trailers gave away almost nothing; the poster even less. All anybody knew was that it was maybe about time travel, and also that Travis Scott thought it was “fire”.

Now, finally, the review embargo for Tenet has broken, and the critical notices are in. And they are, surprisingly, extremely mixed; some maybe even negative.

Let’s dive into them.

Everybody Agrees Tenet Is Very, Very Confusing

Most of the reviewers of the film are careful not to spoil the plot, so there’s little in the way of precise details. But reading the notices, one quickly gets the sense that most reviewers wouldn’t even know how to spoil the film if they tried — proceedings are so confusing, many of them have struggled to recap the basics.

The film follows a CIA agent played by John David Washington who learns the ways of “inversion”, a process whereby one controls entropy (the universal trend towards disorder rather than order) is reversed, meaning that one can appear to be moving backwards rather than forward in time. This skill in his saddlebag, the man — only known as “The Protagonist” — must stop the end of the world, an apocalypse engineered by Kenneth Branagh’s big bad.

So the film’s not about time travel, precisely, but instead about reversal. I think.

Wenlei Ma of news.com.au is similarly nonplussed. “First up, let me tell you there are no spoilers in this review because I don’t know how to begin spoiling this mindf**k of a movie,” Ma begins, concluding that the process of unspooling the film’s details will give most viewers “the bends.”

Sadly, a lot of reviewers think that working out that mystery is far from fruitful. “Take away the time-bending gimmick, and Tenet is a series of timidly generic set pieces: heists, car chases, bomb disposals, more heists,” Jessica Kiang of the New York Times writes.

But It’s Also Kinda Fun?

Not all of the reviews are so negative. Alex Godfrey of Empire describes the film as innately satisfying. “It once again proves Nolan’s undying commitment to big-screen thrills and spills,” he writes. “If you’re after a big old explosive Nolan braingasm, that is exactly what you’re going to get, shot on old-fashioned film too. By the time it’s done, you might not know what the hell’s gone on, but it is exciting nevertheless. It is ferociously entertaining.”

My @nytimes review of #TENET, which has absolutely no spoilers because the plot is incomprehensible and I only cared about the suits.

But I cared *a lot* about the suits. https://t.co/YQkuh2nncN

— Jessica Kiang (@jessicakiang) August 21, 2020

Sandra Hall of The Sydney Morning Herald largely agrees. “Christopher Nolan has a great gift for keeping you in the moment even if you can’t work out when the moment is or what it means,” Hall writes. “His action sequences are breathtaking – superbly controlled and brilliantly enhanced by the urgency of their percussive scores and unnerving sound effects.”

Many reviewers draw connections between the film and the Bond franchise. Like a good 007 spy flick, Tenet is littered with big action spectacles and moustache-twirling bad guys. “To use the old expression, [Nolan] puts the money on the screen, delivering the kind of noisy, extravagant and fundamentally ridiculous pulp fiction which reminds you why you go to the cinema,” Nicholas Barber of the BBC writes. And for some, that will be enough.