I didn’t get it. But I will watch it again and try to because there seems to have been a lot of effort put into it.
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I found it was a film that rewards second (or more) viewing.
It is a film that grows on you with repeated viewings (making it good to own.) The Protagonist has some sharp one-liners (“I ordered my hot sauce an hour ago.”) Neil is a great ally in the Bond tradition. Kat has the best character development scene when she confronts Sator and he realizes who (or should I say when) she is. While it doesn’t have an outlandish stunt like Bond or MI would, it does show some things like the car chase we haven’t seen since Matrix Reloaded.
Still, it’s riddled with plot holes. But worth the ride. It takes work to enjoy it though.
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Not mine but think some folks might get a laugh (or wow) out of this…
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I’ll bite. Like what?
Ooh, ohh, let me do my standard bit:
plot hole = a narrative failure to explain how the plot progresses from one point to the other, but often used as a term if audiences did not follow the plot due to a variety of reasons
elipsis = a deliberate choice not to explain obvious progressions from one point to the other, with the audience expected to understand or think about it themselves
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Pulls up chair. Has pate, table water crackers, and appropriate beverage.
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I would like this, but it puts a huge amount of pressure on me…
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But how often have we seen Orion rise to such challenges
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Okay, maybe I just don’t understand it as well as you. But here are some questions I have or was confused by:
Summary
So once a character goes through the “inverter”, their entropy is reversed and they go backward in time. But how does this work for the ships and cars? And the cargo crate the main three characters hide in as they head back to Vietnam to confront Sator? They don’t fit inside the inverter. And what’s Hamish Patel’s character doing there? Wouldn’t his task have “preceded” his work with the 747 with The Protagonist and Neil? He wouldn’t have known The Protagonist before that.
Summary
The boat isn’t reversed, The protagonist, Neil and Kat are, it’s why they are in those shipping containers being provided with their own, inverted, air supply, then later have cut off a whole cabin to provide the inverted air they need. The boat is only going backwards from their perspective and the containers, in of themselves are not inverted, just housing inverted items, people and air. Same with the cars, they are driving the cars, essentially, in reverse, and trying to compensate - it’s basically a bigger version of how The Protagonist interacted with the inverted bullet when he was shown it by Laura at the start, only this time it’s him that’s inverted rather than the object (hence the car can explode, but the explosion freezes him)
Can I drive a car?
I can’t vouch for the handling, friction and wind resistance are reversed. You’re inverted, the world is not. You can’t fight the prevailing wind of entropy. Don’t try flying a plane – it’d fall out of the sky. Once again, you’re inverted, the world is not – and those forces will be pushing back on you continuously.
The Protagonist then crashes into a few vehicles and drives the wrong way as he tries to get used to it.
As for Mahir; he, like Priya and Neil, has been taking orders from Tenet the whole film, so, inverted or not, The Protagonist talks, he listens. From his perspective this is a few weeks before he’s asked to help crash a plane, but being the spy he is, never questions - all of Tenet (the group) works to quote The Living Daylights; YARN | Section 26, paragraph 5: need-to-know. I'm sure you understand. | James Bond: The Living Daylights (1987) | Video clips by quotes | b8715b48 | 紗
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Exciting News: TENET 4K blu-ray finally dropped to $19.99 at Best Buy, so I have placed my order, and will pick it up on Monday. I look forward to joining the conversation with my fellow wizards next week.
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Nolan claims that Fritz Lang’s Spies was an influence, and certainly I could see it in particular during Caine’s appearance, but I’d be curious to hear if you can see points of influence I missed.
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I guess it would make sense to have the gunbarrel back at the end in a Chris Nolan Bond movie 
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Tenet in particular absolutely would have the gun barrel at the start and the end.
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My take on it: it’s an interesting variation on the genre, certainly very stylised and with tons of effort. Ultimately it’s perhaps so deep in its own particular niche - Nolan-would-be-Bond-if-Bond-had-been-thought-up-by-Murakami-and-PKD - that I’m not sure it would have turned out as THE big crowd pleaser it was marketed as.
I liked the casting, it’s quite easy to see either Pattison or Washington as Bond and I’d actually like to see more of them without the TENET inversion - which perhaps is more of a gimmick than adding a layer to the time theme: visually arresting but hard to believe in outside the actual scene.
Summary
The loose thread is of course the one every time travel story suffers up to a point: here at least Kat would exist twice since she killed her hubby after which - in this particular timeline - none of the events which brought her there would happen. But that is, in the context of a story employing inverted matter, not a very big hurdle.
Like the turnstiles and the nebulous motivation of the ‘future’ to kill the past - hardly much more rabid than what some real life persons present as their ‘beliefs’ - that’s framework we just accept as a given.
I would have liked a villain whose ultimate aim was a little easier to understand. But very evidently this Sator guy is entirely realistic. Some men just want to see the world burn. In our day and age that’s already sufficient motivation…,
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Watched on 4K blu-ray.
I had not been a fan of Nolan’s work until INTERSTELLAR, but saw all his films because of their craft and his talent. In INTERSTELLAR and then DUNKIRK, he seemed to deepen his art. TENET is another film of amazing craft, but of less heart than his previous two movies
Summary
I liked the relationship between Neil and the Protagonist. Pattinson plays Neil as struggling to stop himself from blurting out the truth. There is a palpable sense of his love for The Protagonist, and also a wistfulness at seeing his friend before he knew him–not the man he became–still unformed.
As for the rest–good and enjoyable, but I do not feel compelled to re-see the movie as I did with Nolan’s previous two. Maybe because this project was so long-aborning, it originated when heart was of less importance to Nolan. If there is a follow-up film, it would be great to see Neil and The Protagonist as a more evolved couple.
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Summary
Yes, during that particular month that the film takes place (the opera siege to the motorway chase) the protagonist, Sator and Kat would appear to exist 3 times 1 going forward, 1 going back, then the oldest going forward again. Neil possibly more so as he has an inverted trip before we meet him, but it’s not a loose thread, it’s a part of the narrative; They are then trying to avoid themselves - something The Protagonist is very bad at given he crashes into himself on the motorway and has a fight with himself at the airport.
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