Well, I saw TENET tonight. I had seen enough press to know it might be a controversial choice. I should have listened. In the movie, the characters have the luxury of getting their time back. I envy them. They should have called this film SSEM TOH. That’s HOT MESS inverted. If you’ve been through the turnstile you’ll understand. This is what you get when you base the entire plot of your movie on a visual effect. There are some bold and engaging sequences, and if you can go into the film enjoying it as a series of fireworks, you’ll be fine. But there are also times when I am looking at the screen and literally thinking, “Really? You want me to be impressed by that? They were doing that on Bewitched in the 60s.” It’s like Nolan had never been in the editing room before and suddenly he sees the editor scan backwards through a sequence. It’s entertaining for newbies for about 5 minutes, but you can’t build a movie around it.
It would have been nice if someone had crashed a jumbo jet into the movie theater and wheeled me out on a gurney and safely into the past. But alas no.
You’ve been warned about the dialogue being too low in the mix, and it often is. However don’t for a minute think it is designed to engage you MORE in the story. My theory is that it’s a last minute defensive move. The plot is a train wreck, but if he muffles the dialogue, then when you fail to follow along you’ll think it’s because you can’t hear. I don’t think it would be any better even if you could hear.
There are a couple of good performances. Branagh manages to actually be somewhat frightening in a role that could easily have been camp. But I suspect he would have been fun to watch doing that as well. And I have to grudgingly admit, Robert Pattinson really is quite a talented chameleon. His boozy English agent is well done and a color I haven’t seen from him before. I don’t always enjoy the movies he’s in, but his abilities are becoming undeniable. Unfortunately John David Washington is the weak link here. Everyone else in this movie is acting circles around him and he’s just flat. Nothing seems to elicit much of a reaction from him. There was actually a scene where I swear he and Robert Pattinson were acting in two different movies. Perhaps he was expending his energy trying to make sense out of all the exposition he’s forced to recite, and there wasn’t much left over to make me care.
It would have been nice if someone had crashed a jumbo jet into the movie theater and wheeled me out on a gurney and safely into the past. But alas no.
7.8
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