Tenet [Amazon Exclusive Limited Edition Steelbook] [4K

is a 2020 science fiction action-thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, who produced it with Emma Thomas. A co-production between the United Kingdom and the United States, it stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh. The plot follows a secret agent (Washington) as he manipulates the flow of time to prevent World War III.

Nolan took more than five years to write the screenplay after deliberating about Tenet’s central ideas for over a decade. Pre-production began in late 2018, casting in March 2019, and principal photography lasted three months in Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States, from May to November. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shot on 70 mm and IMAX. Scenes of time manipulation were filmed both backwards and forwards. Upwards of one hundred vessels and thousands of extras were used.

Delayed three times because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tenet was released in the United Kingdom on August 26, 2020, and United States on September 3, 2020, in IMAX, 35 mm, and 70 mm. It was the first Hollywood tent-pole to open in theatres after the pandemic shutdown, and grossed $362 million worldwide, making it the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2020. However, it failed to break even due to its costly production and marketing budget, losing distributor Warner Bros. Pictures as much as $100 million. The film received generally favourable reviews from critics on Metacritic, with Rotten Tomatoes saying it had “all the cerebral spectacle audiences expect from a Christopher Nolan production.”

Plot (WARNING MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS)
A CIA agent, the “Protagonist”, participates in an undercover operation at a Kyiv opera house. His life is saved by a masked soldier with a red trinket, who “un-fires” a bullet through a hostile gunman. After seizing an artefact, the Protagonist is captured by mercenaries. He endures torture before consuming cyanide. He awakens to learn that the cyanide was a test of his loyalty; his team has been killed, and the artefact lost.

The Protagonist joins a secret organization called Tenet. A scientist shows him bullets with “inverted” entropy, which allows them to move backwards through time. She believes that they are manufactured in the future, and a weapon exists that can wipe out the past. Aided by a local contact Neil, the Protagonist traces the bullets to arms dealer Priya Singh. He discovers that she is a member of Tenet; her cartridges were purchased and inverted by Russian oligarch Andrei Sator.

The Protagonist approaches Sator’s estranged wife Kat, an art appraiser, who authenticated a Goya drawing forged by a man named “Arepo”, which Sator thereafter purchased for $9 million from Arepo; Sator uses the drawing to blackmail her and keep her under his control. The Protagonist plots to steal the drawing with Neil from a free port facility in Oslo Airport. There they find a machine, a “turnstile”, and fend off two masked men. Priya explains that the turnstile can invert the entropy of objects and people, and the masked men were the same person.

In the Amalfi Coast, Kat introduces the Protagonist to Sator, but learns that the drawing is intact. The three go boating, and Kat attempts to drown Sator, but the Protagonist saves him. The Protagonist offers to help Sator retrieve a case, which, he says, contains Plutonium-241. In Tallinn, the Protagonist and Neil ambush an armoured convoy and steal the case, which contains the artefact lost in Kyiv. They are ambushed by an inverted Sator, who holds Kat hostage. The Protagonist gives Sator an empty case, and he retreats. The Protagonist saves Kat but is captured and taken to Sator’s warehouse.

The inverted Sator shoots Kat with an inverted round, while the normal Sator demands the location of the artefact; the Protagonist gives him false information. Tenet operatives led by Ives rescue the Protagonist while Sator escapes. The group take Kat through Sator’s turnstile to invert her, reversing the effect of the round. The Protagonist returns to the ambush site and chases Sator. His vehicle is overturned, and Sator sets it on fire; the Protagonist is saved by Ives’ team again. Neil reveals that he is a member of Tenet.

The Protagonist and Neil travel back in time to the free port in Oslo. There the Protagonist fights his past self and enters the turnstile to revert himself, followed by Neil and Kat. Priya explains that the artefacts are parts of an “algorithm”, which Sator is assembling, capable of catastrophically inverting entropy.

Kat reveals that Sator is dying from pancreatic cancer. He will trigger the algorithm with a dead man’s switch, believing that the world should die with him. Kat believes that Sator will kill himself during their vacation, when they were last happy together. The Protagonist, Neil, Kat, and the Tenet forces invert back to that day, so Kat can delay Sator’s death, while Tenet secures the algorithm.

Tenet tracks the algorithm to Sator’s hometown of Stalsk-12 in Northern Siberia. In a “temporal pincer movement”, red team troops move forward in time, while the blue team troops move backward. The Protagonist and Ives are aided by a masked corpse of a blue-team trooper with a red trinket on his backpack after seeing him dying in reverse. In Vietnam, Kat boards Sator’s yacht and kills him, as the Protagonist and Ives secure the algorithm.

The Protagonist, Neil, and Ives break up the algorithm and part ways. The Protagonist notices the trinket on Neil’s rucksack. Neil reveals that he was recruited by the Protagonist years in the future and that this mission is the end of a long friendship. Priya attempts to have Kat assassinated, but is killed by the Protagonist, who has realized that he is the future mastermind behind Tenet.

I always love a Nolan movie from Memento to Dunkirk and now Tenet. On the first watch, you may get a little lost but this will only bring you back another time and realize how simple the story really is.