You will either love it or hate it and unfortunately I am in the later camp. I wanted to love the movie, it has impressive visuals, great cast, decent concept. Despite all these Nolan for me is the biggest failure for this movie, he wanted to write an indie movie but had a huge budget and in order to make the movie smart just forgets to tell a compelling story. The movie is neither a good spy movie (where script dictates the character actions rather than story) nor does it fully untangle the mystery it starts in the first half. Without Nolan's name this would be a much lower critics score. Pattinson and specially Debicki are great here but John David Washington was mostly with a smug face throughout the movie.

I can understand why people will like it but it just did not click with me.

Loved it! Visually gorgeous. The action/stunts amazing! Seeing things move forward & backwards at same time was sooo cool! Filmed beautifully. The Nolan time/space mumbo jumbo plot/story was NOT that complicated. Didn’t lose me much.

Throughly enjoyed it. Going back for seconds today.

A

Absolutely loved this film. If there is one director out there makes .movies to be seen on the big screen, its Nolan. From the opening scene you know you are in for a fun ride. Washington was good but Pattinson steals the show. Cant wait for his take on Batman next year. I understood what was going probably 90% of the time. The whole time inversion special effects were amazing, especially the ending. Cant wait to see it again!

A

Whoo! So nice be in the theater again.


As for the movie... overall I liked it didn't love it.

it was really really nice

After reading and watching videos throughly going through the movie's plot points I would like to see it again to see how knowing everything beforehand will enhance another viewing.

I didn't love it as much as other top tier Nolan films, but I did really enjoy this. It wasn't as confusing as I was expecting it to be after hearing so many of the complaints, but I will admit that just like Inception and Interstellar at a certain point it does become quite muddled and convoluted and while that might ruin a lot of the enjoyment for some it never really bothered me here. I thought JDW and Battinson were equally great in this and man has Nolan come a long way from doing those sloppy, messy hand to hand fight scenes that we had to endure for a good majority of his previous films.

Debicki and Branagh were really good too even though I get the complaints about Branagh maybe being a little over the top at times. Nolan also never dissapoints when it comes to the global scale action sequences either with the time inversion stuff being on a whole other level awesome, but it was hard to follow at times.

B+

Im in the bathroom during my first viewing of this movie. God it’s boring. No idea what’s happening. The reverse bullet thing is the only compelling part. The spy movie elements and characters are bland as rice.

Rankings:
TDK - A+
Interstellar - A+
Inception - A+
Memento - A
The Prestige - A
Batman Begins - B+
Tenet - B+
The Dark Knight Rises - B+
Insomnia - B+
Following - B+
Dunkirk -B+

I just loved this, amazing experience. It kind of fucks with the mind, but it's so fast paced that I didn't get a chance to breath and ponder during the film and in just consuming it I was loving being part of it. Soundtrack is riveting, the editing and cinematography top notch, it's explosive and probably best experienced on the big screen. It's one of these films, while I'm in it I don't want it to end. Cast is great, Washington, first real film I see him in I think, is excellent, not surprisingly he reminds me of Denzel in the best way. Maybe before the artifact heist I felt myself questioning a bit where it was going, but then the heist was tense and my attention to what was happening in front of me didn't let up anymore the rest of the way. Nolan just makes things work, he's on another level of film making, it's art, entertainment in the purest way.

A

Never thought I'd actually see this opening weekend given the circumstances and I'm between NY and LA where the markets are still closed, but I decided to drive to San Diego with a friend of mine on Sunday to do a movie day of New Mutants, Unhinged and this to close things out. I cannot wait!

I want to see Inception and TDK again, but I'd say Memento is my favorite film of his and this comes closest to that since.

Ranking:
Memento - A+
Tenet - A
Inception - A
The Prestige - A
Interstellar - A
Dunkirk - A
Batman Begins - B+
Insomnia - B+
The Dark Knight - B+
The Dark Knight Rises - B

This had nice action scenes but that’s it. The story is awful.

I was just thinking about this again and one point of criticism that come to my mind is that I didn't get, or just couldn't feel Washington's affection for Kat. He never seemed to show any interest in her romantically, yet he was continuously acting for her interest, to the point of risking a mission.

Now that few people have seen this. Couple of questions

How did they have the technology to get inverted before the finale? Did they get it when trying to save Kat? If so how and when was it mentioned? Was it Andrei who left it? If so then why?

All that spy stuff after the opening act is there anything that was so obvious or were there any clues or is it just being introduced from point A to point B.

Definitely Nolan's most complicated film yet, but I thought it was a blast for the most part. Absolutely stunning action sequences and the more I sit with it the more I like it. Robert Pattinson was great and best in show for me cast-wise. A-

The plot of this movie is so complicated that it's like a parody of a Nolan film:

CIA operative Washington tries to stop Ukrainian attack but is captured and has to take a suicide pill which isn't really a suicide pill but a sleeping agent that proves to a secret organization he's got what it takes to take on a different mission involving a secret technology that could spell the end of humanity.

Apparently joins this organization as he's considered dead, so may as well.

Learns secret technology can time invert objects and that it has links to a couple of different arms-dealers, one bad, the other less bad.

Robert Pattinson, an agent of some kind, shows up.

The two start working together with less bad arms dealer, some old Indian lady, who'd sold the arms to the bad one, Branagh, who with the secret tech had time inverted the bullets he'd bought.

Randomly procures a valuable painting from Michael Kaine to get close to the wife of the guy in control of said technology (Branagh), which painting she'd sold a forgery of to him, which forgery he uses to blackmail her, or something.

Washington then plots with Branagh's wife to get close to Branagh, pretends to be having an affair to explain the connection. Uses some special phrase to communicate to Branagh his (fake) intentions, that he knows about the technology or whatever, and the two become faux buddies.

Meaning Washington is pretending to pretend with the wife to fake pretend to the husband while ultimately being truthful to the wife.

Feelings apparently develop between Washington and the wife, even though they barely speak about anything apart from her husband.

Washington gets inverted and starts fighting people that are fighting him forwards while he's fighting them backwards while he's moving through space forwardly, and time backwardly. Turns out he was one of the backwards dudes he'd fought earlier and that he's now living out his future past.

A whole bunch of other stuff happens.






Review:

Grows on you a bit but it's so dense with complication and unjustified gravitas that it's almost a comedy. The physics is interesting but probably inaccurate, interactions between objects in different time states probably wouldn't work in the way depicted. For instance when Washington reverse-drops that bullet in the beginning it's explained that he has to think he's dropping it for the reverse action to take place, but his thoughts are operating normally, through time forwardly, so he'd need conscious foresight of an inverted object's relative past to know what to think in order to cause the action it's about to do in the present. So he'd have to be able to think backwardly to become causal, meaning he'd need to know his own motivations and actions ahead of real-time for his caused behavior of the inverted object to be at all natural. The fight between him and his future self handles this well enough to subvert our disbelief, but in reality things would probably be a lot more chaotic, even though Washington had already been part of the fight from the other side.

Pros: Conceptually interesting. Actions sequences are cool.

Cons: Music too loud. Character development sucks. Acting is often wooden. Could do with a dozen characters and plot lines being cut. Lacks any emotionality until the very last scene. Complicated doesn't mean smart.

C+

I don't share the criticism that the complication of the plot is a problem for the film, but nicely written review!

How does your ranking of Nolan films look like?

I have complicated thoughts on this. It definitely brought the spectacle and the set pieces were everything I could want from a Nolan summer blockbuster. On the other hand, even though I can now see the overall picture and make sense of the story, very rarely did I understand what was happening moment to moment.

The time travel stuff is actually the easiest to work out. Some people are going forward and some are going backwards and some are doing both at the same time. The Future has been ruined by the present and the past and now the Future is returning the favor. That right there is an excellent plotline. Unfortunately, it's also just a throwaway bit of dialogue near the end of the film. One that gets quickly forgotten because the story is moving way too fast, or perhaps never heard at all beacause of questionable sound mixing. I think if they had laid out the greater idea sooner the rest would have been easier to follow. Like in Inception, we have a basic concept to hang on to (it's a heist that DiCaprio needs to do in order to get his family back) from the start, and therefore we can just go with it when all the layers and layers of dream science kick in. But in Tenet, while I'm struggling to even hear the dialogue they are going a mile a minute about technicalties that I didn't really care about it, making everything colder and colder until Nolan decides that actually, the humanity of the story is what is important, and that now JDW is willing to sacrifice the entire history of the world to protect this woman he just met. Oh no, actually he lied about it because he was gonna shoot her anyways ... but then the villain just finds the macguffin anyways and fire freezes him in the car even though all military equipment seems to work as normal in the Inverse ... wait what? Just picture all of that out of context and you have the script to Tenet.

Frustrations aside, it does give us a very unique cinematic experience. The score is incredible. Every action scene is so intense. It was never boring like Interstellar either. The two and a half hours flew by and it could (and probably should have) added another half hour to let things breathe. Give the characters who are going backwards in time a moment to reflect on what has happened thus far, and why its happening. Maybe another viewing will help, since I'll have full knowledge of what the overall goals of both heroes and villains are, while also knowing that the movie is also taking place in reverse at the same time.

B

Rankings:

The Dark Knight - A+ - In my all time top ten
Memento - A+ - top 20
Dunkirk - A+
Inception - A+
Batman Begins - A+

The Dark Knight Rises - A
The Prestige - A-

Tenet - B
Insomnia - B

Interstellar - C+

The Dark Knight
Memento
Inception
Insomnia
Dunkirk
The Prestige
Interstellar
The Dark Knight Rises
Batman Begins
Tenet

This is way too convoluted and complicated. The entire climax I didn't know which teams were going forward and which were going backwards and why, and even the Branagh/Debicki parts without the time travel, the drawing, etc. was unnecessary work in a movie your brain is already working hard in. Add in Nolan's cold style and the main character having no development and fast dense dialog often in foreign dialogs trying to explain what's going on, and JDW and Debicki having no romantic chemistry, and it was hard to get engaged in this one. Once the palindrome aspect is revealed there's no surprises in how it's going to pop up other than Pattinson seeing JDW's face, you could see from miles away Debicki would be the one diving off the boat for example or that he was saved in the opera house by him or Pattinson. Some cool action sequences and good performances though. I think spending the first half of the movie going forwards and the second half of the movie retracing his steps going backwards is a good idea but they tried to do too much.

After re-watching this yesterday and knowing everything ahead of time I feel the flow was much better and found it a little more coherent than last time. Still it feels there is too much stuff going on and not much to latch on. The story also tweaks a lot of back-and-forth logic to its needs. JDW and Debicki have no chemistry at all, Pattinson is easily the best thing about this in terms of acting and his character is also not entirely developed. The action sequences are still great though I did spot more staged hand-to-hand combats this time around.

Upgrading my grade to B-

I liked this way more on the rewatch. The temporal pincer works!