We are back, baby! I started Drive in Double in December 2019 with the hopes of blogging about a ton of great movies in 2020. The year hasn't exactly gone as planned and many of my most anticipated movies (read that here: https://benjamminh23.wixsite.com/website/post/2020-most-anticipated-movies) have been pushed back to the end of the year or 2021. But one has released, and I was lucky enough to see it on Monday night when it premiered in my town. (Side note - I love AMCs, but support your local theaters when possible. $11 bucks to get in for a premier movie.) The newest movie from esteemed director Christopher Nolan is here and Tenet is an absolute thrill ride.
We all know Nolan (Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk, The Dark Knight Trilogy) loves his mind bending thrillers, and Tenet is no exception. He once again bends the rules of time and space and toys with the imaginations of the viewers. This time, we follow The Protagonist, played by John David Washington, in his fight to save the world through international espionage and time altering "inversion." It kicks off with a bang and never lets up, keeping you focused at every turn so as not to miss anything. The action is some of the best and most creative I have seen on the silver screen.
The duo and chemistry of Washington and co-star Robert Pattinson is fantastic. If you haven't bought stock in Washington (yes that's Denzel's son and former pro football player) you should get all you can now. He was phenomenal in BlacKkKlansman, but Tenet is a star making role and he's a mega star in the making. As for Pattinson, f you still see him as the Twilight vampire, I'd suggest checking out Good Time on Netflix for starters. I'm so excited to see him in The Batman in 2021.
Tenet is action packed and the story is very well written - if you follow it. To me it wasn't as mind bending as Inception or Interstellar. I felt like I picked up on the majority of the plot points and after a quick Wikipedia read I had it down. I don't want to spoil anything because it's so new and I'm not sure how many theaters are open and carrying it right now, but I do want to mention one moment that can be seen in the trailers. About midway through the movie, a 747 aircraft crashes into a building. And it was all real. Yes, Christopher Nolan actually crashed a real plane into a real building for this movie. Not out of the sky of course because that would be insane, but Nolan found that using CGI and miniatures would be more expensive than just blowing up a bunch of real stuff. It looks so much better with practical effects, too. A few of my other favorites scenes came in the form of a restaurant kitchen fight, the final end battle, and the crazy inversion scenes. The inversion effects were all fantastic and made for some really great action, stunts, and gunfights. My only criticism is that it is very loud. That's not a huge flaw because the musical score from Ludwig Göransson is incredible and pairs so well with the action, but it was hard to hear dialogue in some spots. I've been watching at home so much, I forget movie theaters don't have the subtitles I've become accustomed to.
All told, Tenet is easily the best movie I've seen this year, and well worth a trip to the theater, especially if you're like me and have been itching to go back. Aside from his Dark Knight trilogy, Christopher Nolan doesn't do sequels. He likes focusing on original stories, but I would love to see him go back into the world of Tenet. I left the theater wanting more, and feel as though there's a world of possibility here that we've only just scratched the surface of. And maybe, just maybe, there's a few lines of dialogue at the end that tease a return. But for now go catch this excellent spy thriller, watch some bullets fly backwards, enjoy some great acting, and hang on for the ride through inverted time.
"What's happened, happened."
- BH
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