A frenetic, fantastic, mind-bending marvel spanning time and space.
It hilariously dwarfs Centigrade (which I saw immediately afterward), all of which takes place in one tiny snow-drifted car in Norway (like a play). Seeing a film as enormous, complex, high-budget, thunderous and sweeping as Tenet (filmed in seven countries) then watching Centigrade directly after on Amazon is like comparing your life pre-pandemic purgatory to six months now as a virtual shut-in.
Denzel's son (John David Washington) is pure, loose, unbridled energy and enthusiasm. His super-spy-fi-ness is revelatory. He is as different from Bond as Daniel Craig is from Pierce Brosnan.
Three disappointments though:
1. Kenneth Branagh is miscast. How on God's green earth am I supposed to believe a soft Shakespearean Englishman is a Russian oligarch?
2. Elizabeth Debicki appears out of her depth and comes across quite unsympathetically.
3. I would have enjoyed some subtitles. There are enormous chunks of time when I literally had no idea what people were shouting to one another.
The music is awesome, like Interstellar. In fact, it’s almost a character unto itself.
The power, momentum, electricity and ingenuity crackle in the air.
The film's concept is equal parts dazzling and simplistic, not unlike Memento or Inception, and I sincerely hope it attracts more people than it repels. The world needs Tenet to rake in billions (and to reboot movie houses around the world) more than it knows.
I officially look forward all the more to seeing Robert Pattinson's incarnation of Batman. I see this evening that production has halted temporarily as he's got Covid-19. Fingers crossed he bounces back quickly and fully so he (and we) can get on with the show.
