User reviews

A lot of the audience members of Tenet have complained that Tenet is too confusing to enjoy, and that's what unfortunately makes Tenet so unenjoyable at times for me. I already knew that Tenet was supposed to be confusing when going into the movie, so I tried my best to focus and listen, and yet I still got confused. There's a lot of different timelines going on with mashing sub plots, and the film didn't do a great job at explaining everything. Maybe it's just me, but the film was just really hard to follow. I even watched an explanation video, and that was even confusing. The plot is just really complex, and even though I couldn't really follow it the whole time, I still appreciated it because of how smart and deep it is.

Aside from the plot, everything is near perfect. The inverted fight scenes were crazy in the best ways possible. There were times where I was just blown away by some of the scenes, and I questioned how Christopher Nolan filmed it Tenet is the first of its kind, and the fact that Christopher Nolan nailed it, I think he deserves some awards for that.

Tenet is a really solid movie. With good performances from the actors, great action scenes, amazing direction, and an extremely complex and mind-blowing plot. Tenet deserves nothing less than a 7/10. And if you're going into this film for the first time, then prepare to awake the sixth sense, because this film will destroy every last brain cell.

I'm a big fan of Nolan and having some complexity to movies but it should not be the whole plot, if you don't take into account the time reverse thing the movie is really empty and it's just a bad action movie. The time thing is not interesting enough to be the whole movie. The scene that are supposed to at suspense don't have your attention because you are trying to understand the plot. The acting isn't great, the character are not putting emotion into it, and I thing the form of the movies where it never stop is not letting them doing anything. Overall it's not that bad of a movie but it's too complicated and the actor are not helping it at all.

I'd suggest people read the synopsis on Wikipedia before watching the time. Otherwise it would be too hard to follow. If you're the type of person who enjoys watching a movie multiple times and dissecting it then you'll enjoy Tenet

Trying to take my bias opinion away from my critical, logical opinion. Few people comprehend the immense detail with the story, I don't even comprehend all of it, but now I understand enough to believe that this is Nolan's most elaborate story yet. This is a complicated movie, and complicated in a good way. If you (as an audience) don't enjoy or understand this movie I understand why and I don't blame you, but on the contrary if you do enjoy this movie, if you understand the story, then I understand why you may believe this to be one of the most intelligent films of all time. (BOLD claim). We already knew what to expect with the quality of cinematography, visual, score, and even to a certain extent, the wild plot that Christopher Nolan ALWAYS delivers because he's consistent with all his films. What we received with this film though, was simply unexpected. This wasn't a film like the dark knight which provides authenticity to a sci-fi world, or even inception which provided clarity after simple attention. This is a film that is intended to be searched, discovered, thought of, looked at, and inspected in every way possible. And yet, this a film intended to give no easy answers, no simple clarity, no instant gratification. This is a film that wants to defy the odds of films by building curiosity over time rather than losing it. Overall I have a lot to discover, a lot to learn, and a lot to understand from this film, yet I'm extremely pleased with its performance in most categories a film has to offer.

Many reviewers say you have to watch this movie multiple times to really get it all. No, I won't do that. I say a good movie is understandable with one viewing where the viewer is paying attention.

This is a relatively simple story, told in a complex manner with lots of special effects and aggressive sound track. Our future civilization has figured a way to interact with the past and now, in our PRESENT they intend to correct a problem we caused them, and if necessary destroy the world as we know it. So the PRESENT day leaders have to prevent that.

My wife and I watched it on a 2-disc DVD set from our public library. Much of the dialog is difficult to understand because the actors often fail to enunciate, so I had to turn on subtitles about half-way through. The second DVD is filled with extras.

It is a pretty good, entertaining movie, but often very confusing. I would not put it in the top tier of favorite movies. Nolan's "Inception" for example is a much better movie.

I'm not gonna lie, first viewing was a big letdown. As a Nolan fan myself, I was shocked to see what I considered "annoying bad" writing and sound design. The sound design still is a problem as of writing this, but upon second viewing, it was like a little switch flicked on every time I saw something I didn't understand from the last viewing. The little details that I considered bad writing suddenly seemed like an obvious answer. The cheesy parts I thought were, well cheesy, had so much more depth. I'm not going to spoil it, but thinking about The Protagonist and Neil makes me feel so many emotions that upon second viewing never made me feel the way I did, truly beautiful. No movie is perfect, this one definitely isn't perfect. This is no Dunkirk or Inception, but I guarantee this movie will make you use your brain.

On first viewing I will agree with many that the movie is a little difficult to follow . It's a demanding watch on plenty of levels . Where Interstellar and Inception both spent plenty of time throughout the film introducing the science behind it all Tenet ignores it , mostly . They do spell out the concept in a couple of brief scenes but then abandon any science in favour of action .There is plenty of relentless high voltage action if that's your thing and some genuine stunt work was great to see but it all becomes a little pointless if you don't really understand why it's all happening .If you don't like it really loud take some ear plugs . The score is thundering but a little overused for my liking . It is accomplished and brilliant film making but my first impressions were that I just didn't enjoy it as much as some of his previous films . I'll start with a 7 but I believe it has the potential to grow on me . It is a visual treat that's for sure .

I've seen a lot of hate for Tenet, but I honestly believe the movie will age very well, and a lot of the people who hate it now will come to realize just how ahead of its time it is. I will admit that it prioritizes concept over plot and character, and hard-to-hear dialogue has become a recurring problem for Nolan. But the movie is great, and I like it more the more I think about it. You don't need to be super smart to understand it, as some diehard Nolan fans claim, but I believe you do need to be fascinated enough by the philosophy of time to make it a pleasant experience. Without that, I think the movie will bore you and that boredom will probably lead you to miss some key points needed to fill in the puzzle. Filling in the puzzle doesn't mean you'll like it though, because this movie is an experimental thriller disguised as a blockbuster, which is not what people expected.

Hey, maybe I'm wrong, but I expect the love for this movie will grow over the years.

I wrote a small essay in order to keep up with the story and even then, only by the skin of my teeth.

But then, in the final few minutes, when the big bad thing has seemingly been avoided, I was in a maze of incomprehensibility again.

This film is all about the ying and yang, how everything needs balance, but Nolan failed to see that the ability to follow this story also needs the same balance. Travel far enough and you'll come back on yourself, bury your hand in ice, it will feel like it's burning... make a film that is so intelligent... it's dumb again.

Nolan has been given the impression that the audience are smart: they could cope with Inception, yup, it was great. But then Nolan must have thought "so, the audience can follow complex plot-lines... of any complexity" and forgot that we are not in his head and being lost in his own bubble.

A couple of moments in the film throw us totally off and require many re-watches to figure out but some are dumb: at one point, our uninspiring protagonist (why this actor?!) shoots at himself and nothing can explain that away. He is trying to kill himself...?!

And then there are the masks: pretty much our only clear indication that things are running in reverse. But Nolan mucks around with that concept too, confusing us further.

You can have too much intelligence. You can have too much of anything.

Unsatisfying.

Oh, and stop it with the "saving one person against the world" thing. We get it. It's been done.

I have a huge amount of respect for director Christopher Nolan. His recent films Inception, Interstellar, and Dunkirk are three of the best things I've ever seen on film and I automatically want to see whatever new production he comes out with. So, I'm just back from the theater having seen Tenet for the first time (I'm pretty sure there will be a second and third time) and in one sense I have no idea what rating to give. At a minimum it would be worth at least 6/10 for its technical quality alone. But it might be 10/10 for the quality of its fiendishly intricate storyline, which leaves your head spinning by the end. But it' s not without a few problems (see below). So, OK -- 8/10 it is.

Among Nolan's previous works I'd say 'Tenet' owes the most to 'Inception' for its complex, ever-shifting, multilayered plot. For Inception it was the Russian-doll dreamworlds within dreamworlds. For Tenet, it's playing with time and time reversal (as you see from any trailer or synopsis out there). We've had any number of time-travel movies before, and one sure thing they're good for is setting up paradoxes, but the way Nolan deploys this on screen is at times genuinely and startlingly new (as just one example, there's a car chase on a busy freeway where one car is speeding backwards but time-reversed, so from its POV it's racing forward, which is why it can travel that fast driving backward ... and there are many more scenes that I won't spoil.) There are things here we've never seen on screen before.

In the barest of bare-bones summary, the plot is all about a hunt for The Algorithm, something that enables this messing with the timeline The uber-evil Andrei (Kenneth Branagh) aims to use it to start WW III, or even (in a total burst of nihilism) ring down the curtain on all of reality. The shadowy team called Tenet aims to stop this. Keep up with it if you can. On the surface, it's an excellent James Bond imitation. Exposition scenes are followed by thunderous action, rinse, repeat -- pretty much from start to finish. How confused you are at any given moment depends (like Inception) on how many questions are running through your mind: why are we in THIS location now, who's doing what to whom, and what precisely are the characters after? The overall impression, though (again, like Inception) is that there IS substance underneath the high-octane surface and that repeated viewings and study will bring it out. We'll see.

So the production quality is, as usual for Nolan, first-rate. There are big, bravura scenes (wait till you see the big opener in a concert hall) but plenty of close, person-to-person ones to balance. One thing that might be a little jarring is that the scene-to-scene transitions are extremely abrupt and extremely frequent, and I assume that's deliberate -- there's no time for viewers to think even if we want to. But I'll accept that as a feature rather than a bug. The overall flow isn't necessarily helped by the music score (by Ludwig Goransson), which is epic but also insistent and omnipresent. Too much of a good thing. Lots of the personal scenes would just have worked better for me with no background score stepping on the dialog.

For the acting: I thought John David Washington (as The Protagonist) was OK but rather wooden, and he's on screen most of the time. I kept visualizing Will Smith in the part instead -- but maybe he'd have taken over the movie too much and that's not the result Nolan wanted? I don't know. But I liked Robert Pattinson and Elizabeth Debicki quite a lot. They both have substantial, essential roles and they have more nuance and humanity than anything they've done before. Kenneth Branagh still can't do a good Russian accent (though to be fair, not many native-English actors can) and although he's fine, I think as an actor he's much better suited to Shakespeare or Hercule Poirot. There's a big cast of smaller roles (among which is the always-welcome Michael Caine), adding to the difficulty of keeping up with what's developing.

So there it is. I'm looking forward to figuring out more of what's under the hood of this thing.

Listen we all know Nolan swings for the fences of what's possible and pushes the realms of normality. This film for whatever reason just doesn't mesh together the way most of his films do even with complex suspension of disbelief aspects. It's often scattered and juxtaposed to a near outrageous level. The visuals are spectacular at times but also seem way too extravagant to take seriously other times. Robert Pattinson is flawless and probably the standout of the film with his vigorous performance. The same cannot be said about John David Washington's barren and emotionless lack of effort. I can't believe he was given the starring role. He brings the interest level down to almost unwatchable levels. Overall this is one of Nolan's rare misfires which he is capable of once in awhile.

If you want to enjoy an intriguing and interesting film which does tribute to many genres and film-making techniques, then TENET is a great choice.

My IMAX experience: A bit of a headache at start but 20min later the headache gets bigger. About 1 hour in the film, it turns into a migraine. And about 1h 45m in, the head explodes!

So... I had to go again and watch it.

The 2nd time was very rewarding. No headache and i could see through many details and respect the effort making this film.

Overall, this is an outstanding filmmaking effort by Nolan and Co. There is almost no green screen mambo-jumbo, real stunts are a fact and you can enjoy a plot which will keep you thinking what the hell is happening at 50% of the film. Rewatching is also fun; I had the pleasure to watch it in IMAX twice (it's all shot in IMAX cameras btw).

Kudos to the score, it really coated the action and the entire film in a fantastic way, keeping pace at all times.

I don't think I have seen something similar before in terms of non-linear filmmaking and although I was very confused at start, I got into it halfway through and that was very rewarding.

Now I guess many of you are still confused.

I was too. But once you figure it out, it all makes sense. Except some nonsense.

9/10, good solid film.

The speech is very mumbled and not clear. The audio dialogue needs remixing and the background score and effects need lowering in volume. The character builds are non-existent. The plot is predictable. Action and special effects are very good but not ground breaking in this age when anyone can really shoot HD and then play it back backwards. Needs a second watch with sub titles.

Those who liked 'Tenet' said it was confusing. Those who hated 'Tenet' said it was confusing. Having read so many contradicting reviews about 'Tenet' I decided to watch it for myself to make up my own mind.

I tried so hard to understand the film by carefully listening to the dialogue and observing every inch of detail. However, I found myself lost ever so often. The quick-cut editing and fast-spoken dialogue made it all the more difficult to follow.

'Tenet' is trying so hard to take time travel to the next level. Did they succeed? I suppose that would depend on your views of the film. It sure as hell confused the audience. And who enjoy watching confusing movies? And if your audience is still lost an hour into the movie, there's something wrong with the narration... or Nolan is just such a genius that our puny minds can't comprehend his vision and understanding.

Nevertheless, I decided to stuck it out and kept watching. The final our started making sense, and the action sequences were good (nothing mind blowing, though). Once I understood the concept of inverted entropy (not only moving back in time, but also backwards in time), it was easier to follow. It was still way over-complicated.

Another big issue for me, was the film's lead: John David Washington, who starred as Protagonist (seriously, Christopher Nolan, you couldn't give your protagonist a name other than Protagonist????). He lacked emotion and for most parts looked either tired or lazy. There was very little enthusiasm from him as an actor. He certainly did NOT make a likable or credible hero. Maybe he himself was so confused that he didn't know what the hell he was doing and concentrated too hard on saying all those confusing lines.

The visuals were interesting in the beginning, but during the final act it simply looked like a film that was playing in reverse. In closing, 'Tenet' is not a movie I can recommend. If you want to watch it to see what the hype was all about, then go ahead. But there are far better and easier to understand action movies out there. And to sit through this for two and a half hours is exhausting.

Christopher Nolan's 2000 movie 'Memento' was far better. This was also an interesting concept where the story was moving back in time, but at the same time moving forward.

As this will be non-spoiler, I can't say too much about the story. However, what I can is this: Tenet's story is quite dynamic in the sense that you won't understand it till it wants you to. So, for the first half, your brain is fighting for hints and pieces to puzzle together the story. It isn't until halfway through the movie that Tenet invites you to the fantastic storytelling by Christopher Nolan.

Acting is beyond phenomenal, and I'd be genuinely surprised if neither Robert Pattinson nor John David Washington doesn't receive an Oscar nomination for best actor. It's also hard not to mention how good Elizabeth Debicki and Aaron Johnson both are. All around, great acting, and the dialogue amps up the quality of the movie.

The idea of this movie is damn fascinating, and while there are films that explore time-travelling, there's never been anything quite like this. It has such a beautiful charm and for the most part, explains everything thoroughly. It feels so much more complex than any form of time-travelling we've seen, and no less could've been expected from Nolan.

Oh my lord, the score for this film fits so perfectly. Every scene that's meant to feel intense was amped by a hundred because of how good the score was. Let me just say though, none of them will be found iconic, but they fit the story and scenes so well.

In the end, I walked out, feeling very satisfied. Nevertheless, I do have issues with the film that I cannot really express without spoiling bits of the story. There are definitely little inconsistencies that I found myself uncovering as the story progressed. However, I only had one issue that I found impacted my enjoyment. That issue was understanding some of the dialogue. No, not in the sense that the movie is too complicated, but more that it was hard to make out was being said at times. It felt like the movie required subtitles, but that probably was because, at a time in the film, there was far too much exposition.

Nevertheless, I loved this film, I'll be watching it at least two more times, and I think most of you in this group will enjoy it. I definitely suggest watching it in theatres if possible, just so you can get that excitement.

(4/5) & (8.5/10) for those that care about number scores.

Greetings from Lithuania.

I just came back from a premiere of "Tenet" (2020), a hugely anticipated new movie by Mr. Christopher Nolan - my favorite director. I'm a huge Nolan's fan, saw all his movie in a theater and they all left me speechless and i even consider "Interstellar" as my favorite film of this millennium - i'm a real Nolan's fan boy.

And with my broken heart i can only say after seeing "Tenet" that it was a first real disappointment by this brilliant director. This time Mr. Nolan has outdone himself, and not in a good way. Story and plot were a mess. Its not "Inception" by any means - that movie had a very simple idea and plot which was put into this intriguing world and concept - it wasn't difficult to follow because you always knew exactly what was the goal, who is who and etc. "Tenet" does not had any of that. While i enjoyed the plot for a around first 40% of its run time, later its just become so convoluted that farther it went the more i was scratching my head and eventually started to rolling my eyes when Robert Pattinson's and John David Washington's characters were describing the plot to each other, jumping for and between, reading between the lines and etc - it was simply way to complicated and eventually convoluted. By the end of this movie i really didn't care what was going on nor did i tried to understand - the movie's plot and storytelling lost me completely. Its not Nolan "the director" who wasn't good here, but its Noland "the screenwriter" who i think overdone himself this time, and not in a good way. The good things in this movie were for me performance by Kenneth Branagh who was excellent villain, cinematography and basically all the production values in this movie - they are first rate. Unfortunately plot and storytelling were below average - they just didn't for me at all.

Overall, unfortunately the year 2020 was a terrible year not only because of the virus, but also it was a year when we got a first flop from Mr. Nolan. Its not that its a bad movie, like i said production values are first rate but other then that you will be scratching your head in disbelieve of how convoluted and cold this movie is. For his next feature Mr. Nolan should slow it down with plot and maybe take his brother as writer to help - together they can put plots and screenplays like no other. "Tenet" unfortunately is not the case.

This is as good as Cinema gets. I didn't expect that Nolan would create such a original movie once again. This is never been done before. It's incredible - one of the best Movies I've ever sen and I actually think that This movie tops Inception.

I have seen Tenet now 3 times for the last 2 weeks and tomorrow it's going to be my fourth time.

Time never been put on screen like this before. Its mindblowing thrill ride with soundtrack, acting and action that has never been seen on the big screen!

10/10

I Will watch it again and again and again.

The movie has exceptionelly a lot of hidden messages that will blow your mind when you figure it out. This is as I Said as good as cinema gets. Christopher Nolan is the only director that still makes cinema Alive and the only one that makes This big bold unique original movies.

Love This movie. This might be my favourite movie of all time.

If you don't understand it see it again!

To all the fans out there: please, don't downvote my review just 'cause I dared to give a 6-grade to a movie directed by Nolan. Read it first, thank you very much.

OK, so, what is there to say about this "Tenet"? Well, first and foremost, lemme tell you that the movie isn't "bad" in any way, shape or form. In a blockbuster world populated by "Avengers", "Transformers", awful Disney animated classics' remakes and the likes, you can't seriously go around sayin' that "Tenet" is bad entertainment without being scorned. It's definitely passable entertainment.

But its director is really, really sly, and being such he managed to convince a lot of people (and especially a lot of critics) out there that he created a very profound and complicated movie, when in fact he did not. 'Cause "Tenet" is pretty much a Bond movie going backwards half of the time. The plot is really that simple and predictable - half an hour into it and you'd already grasp pretty much everything there is to grasp. I'm not being arrogant here, please believe me: go watch the movie and you'll realize that yourself. Guaranteed. Now that we have put that aside, I'll go on by laying everything out plain and simple:

PROS:

• Great direction. That's a given: Nolan knows how to put the camera to best use and knows how to keep you hooked most of the time;
• Effective soundtrack. It's not by any chance memorable, but it nonetheless contributes a lot to the movie's overall atmosphere;
• Dark cinematography. Again, very effective and in line with the movie' "serious" tone;
• A couple of great action sequences. And the "backwards special effects" are really a treat to behold.

CONS:

• Mediocre dialogues and screenplay. I mean, a lot of times the dialogues are either cringeworthy or purely explanatory (and the bad guy has the worst lines of them all). On top of that, the screenplay tries the best to conceal its simple narrative, but can't quite manage to convince you that it's phenomenal and brilliant, or that in the end it's isn't just a matter of a banal spy story. And - by the way - the overall theme is too close to blatant fatalism for me to like.
• Cardboard characters. Every single one of them is a total "spy movie" cliché: from the "Protagonist" to the ridiculous villain. They're completely underdeveloped and so there's no chance that the viewers can indentify with them.
• Unconvincing main actor. Of course he's isn't on par with his father Denzel - but that's obvious. The problem is that he also isn't on par neither with Pattison nor especially with Branagh. Really a bad casting choice over here.
• Lack of pathos. You're not gonna feel any empathy towards the characters ('cause, as I said, they're not actually characters: they are puppets, cardboard puppets with no interesting personalities). Nolan himself doesn't seem to care about that, lost as he is in his "entropy gimmick".

Here you go. In conclusion - to sum it up - I'd say that "Tenet" is definitely a movie to be seen on the biggest screen possible. It's a decent blockbuster full of every kind of action and vaguely intriguing in its premise. It's also - however - let down by a predictable storyline and mediocre dialogues. It lacks pathos and presents us with a main actor who is not really that good. But at the very least Nolan with this new movie is trying to do something different from the majority of other big budget productions and we gotta hand it to him. Anyway, his movie isn't by any standard a great one. That's all I had to say. So long folks, and may the "Sator square" be with you!

Christopher Nolan? The man who keeps delivering.. I feel so stupid after seeing his movies the first time, but yet I'm still so impressed. He makes a movie, which I love, but not quite understand completely. I can't stop thinking about it and after some hours, I slowly start to make sense.

Tenet was terrific, even tho my brain felt blended.

Christopher Nolan's latest head-scratching thriller is a far cry from INCEPTION, although as a blockbuster action film in the Bond mould it's fairly enjoyable. But, like DUNKIRK, it manages to be seriously flawed too, and less good than it thinks it is. It suffers hugely from a lead actor who can't actually act; even the Indian kid from EASTENDERS would have been better. Robert Pattinson, Kenneth Branagh and Michael Caine all act Washington off the screen at various points. As for the time travel, it's more like time reversal, and is essentially a MacGuffin which allows the director to incorporate some cool trickery into the otherwise routine action bits. Not bad, but not a film I'll think much about in years to come.

In simplistic manner, i would like to tell fellow bourgeoisie looking to comsume media, if you have one good day in the week, dont waste it on this one. But if you are a forty something dude with a podcast looking to impress Dads in your neighbourhood, i would say break a leg.

Might a few nerds disagrees with me on this while reviving the Temporal paradox theories but any good director need to get the basics right before it starts showing the big brains.

As few Smarty Pants states that this movie requires multiple viewing to understand, I would argue that a good story should be UNDERSTANDABLE with a single viewing when viewer paying attention.

I know , i know i am not smart enough to understand the movie mannnnn.

Out of the 5 elements of a story it only gets few right.

I won't rant about the sound desing or editing etc, i am sure you can find complaining on internet even if you aren't looking for one.