I Watch Films: Tenet

Tenet

A CIA agent (“The Protagonist” (sigh)) dies in the Ukraine; when he wakes up again he is initiated into a secret conspiracy that is part of a time-war-cold-war. “Inverted” items, those that run backwards in time, are being discovered, in many cases the detritus of a future time conflict. Being shot by an inverted bullet is bad.

A Russian arms-dealer, Sator, has made some sort of pact with the future, leaving buried time capsules for them and in return getting technology and instructions. There’s an algorithm, which turns out to be nine bits of oddly-shaped metal, which might reverse time or destroy it or something. The protagonist works his way through the layers and secrets, finding himself caught up with Kat, Sator’s wife, and how she has been trapped by him.

There’s some discussion of time, and paradoxes, which serve to frame the various heists, fights and car chases, seen both going forward and then going backwards. I should probably say that I have no problem with the repetition, the first time I got the spectacle, the second time the craftsmanship. (Heists in particular almost always happen twice in a film, once in the explanation of how it’s supposed to go, the second time how it actually goes. When you break into a place and in the middle the prize turns out to be a cool and weird backward/forwards fight, well that’s good too.)

Anyway, as each layer is revealed the time travel makes less sense and the conspiracy becomes more stupidly convoluted. I appreciate the attempt to make a clever time travel action thriller and if it fails on the cleverness then it at least succeeds in being a dumb time travel action thriller, if a little po-faced at it.

Watch This: For a fun action time travel film
Don’t Watch This: If attempts at serious discussion of time and paradox just make things seem pretentious