Tenet

Directed by Christopher Nolan, Tenet follows John David Washington’s unnamed protagonist as he’s recruited into the mysterious title organization and tasked with preventing a diabolical madman (Kenneth Branagh’s Andrei Sator) from triggering World War III. There’s ultimately never a point at which Tenet feels like anything other than an almost prototypical Christopher Nolan picture, as the movie, which opens with an absolutely electrifying interlude set at a European opera house, boasts virtually all of the elements and attributes the viewer has come to associate with his body of work – including an aggressively impenetrable storyline and an ongoing emphasis on larger-than-life (yet entirely captivating) set pieces. In terms of the former, however, Tenet often fares far worse than one might’ve suspected and feared – as the movie, saddled with a muddy sound mix, is dominated by frustratingly unintelligible dialogue that compounds the already-baffling atmosphere. It does, as a result, become awfully difficult to wholeheartedly (or even partially) embrace the various characters’ ongoing exploits (ie their myriad of motivations remain mostly obscured from start to finish), and it’s clear, ultimately, that it’s the peppering of eye-popping (yet context-free) action sequences, including an astounding car chase and airport heist, within the narrative that prevent the viewer from checking out of the dense proceedings altogether. By the time the noisy, ineffective climax rolls around, Tenet has cemented its place as a fairly disappointing endeavor that will, with the aid of subtitles, improve substantially on repeat viewings.

**1/2 out of ****