TENET (2020)
Freshly back from watching this in an IMAX cinema screen. My first experience of IMAX.
For all the pomp and ceremony of IMAX's superior sound quality, the first thing that struck me was that I couldn't hear much of what the actors were saying above the cornucopia of other sounds. By the halfway point I guess I'd actually heard about 65% of anything anyone said.
I don't think it mattered too much anyway as the dialogue I could hear seemed to be mostly stilted exposition and time-travel gobbledegook. I was beginning to wonder if Nolan had gone one step too far in his attempts to push the boundaries of what cinema is capable of presenting.
But, thankfully, the second half put most of my wandering mind to the back of my mind as the relentless action and set-pieces took over and reminded me that it really didn't matter what the plot was nor whether I could hear anyone as the price of admission was more than adequately paid for by such things as watching a jumbo jet crash into a building.
And that was a minor set-piece. The real visual meat comes when we get to see different time streams converge, which is very hard to explain in words, suffice to say it must be the first film I've ever seen where we see a fist fight between one guy in Forward and another guy in Reverse.
I have no idea if the film would have been better if I had been able to hear more of the plot and dialogue or if it would have been worse, as the point at which I gave up and pretended to myself that I was a foreigner watching an un-subtitled film, just catching the odd phrase here and there, my enjoyment increased ten-fold. Especially as it felt like most of the dialogue was only there as exposition to cater to the dummy demographic.
John David Washington of BlackKklansman fame is great in the title role, aptly named "The Protagonist", his dry delivery providing an ideal counter to the frenetic pace of the action and the absurdity of the plot. Robert Pattinson is great as his sidekick as are the usual Nolan accompaniments of Kenneth Branagh and Michael Caine.
The leading lady is also much more interesting a character than she appears at first glance as Elizabeth Debicki does her best to wrangle with the usual damsel in distress stuff. I don't know if I'm allowed to say it, but she does look kinda weird. Maybe that's her thing though, I dunno, what do you think?
I don't think I've ever seen someone with such a long neck. All I could think of was these guys:
Bless her cotton socks, I hope this doesn't give her a complex, but I remember people calling me a Giraffe when I was growing up, but this is a whole new level. Anyway, you prob wont know what I'm on about until you've seen it.
And just to show I'm not picking on the ladies, if I had one criticism of JD Washington, it would be that he was too short. It's always difficult to manage the camera angles so that your protagonist is truly threatening when the bad guys are always towering over them. Something Tom Cruise has made a priority throughout his career. Maybe they should have brought him in as a consultant.
Plot & dialogue: 6/10
Balls to the wall Cinematic splendour: 9/10
For an overall
7.5/10 IMO. An 8 if you watch it in a good mood, 7 or even 6 if you watch it in a foul mood I should think.
The only trailer before the movie was for the new Bond movie: Which looked very interesting indeed. The trailer did nothing to immediately deter me from preparing to mildly hype myself for it. The changing of the Aston Martin's pop-out-the-headlights machine guns to miniguns is certainly a sign of changing times I can fully get behind
