TENET

John David Washington    Robert Pattinson    Elizabeth Debicki     Kenneth Branagh    

 Michael Caine     Diimple Kapadia     Denzil Smith

     Tenet has all the hallmarks of a blockbuster—established filmmakers, actors, and a riveting story with themes of mind-ripping, intriguing, violence.  It certainly does all that.  What it doesn’t do is give the viewer time to reflect on any current, compelling issues that we should be concerned about nowadays, or probe personal relationships that make them seem to matter.  It’s more of an almost formulaic activation of tropes seen many times before.  This version seems to have been intended to tease us with time travel, frustrated love, and heroic battles between the hero and unrecognized/mysterious adversaries.

     The unnamed protagonist (Washington), a CIA agent, is recruited to match wits with a terrorist, Sator (Branagh) intent on destroying the world.  The first task is to actually come in contact with the man, not a direct route.  The Prospect meets Sir Crosby (Caine) for lunch who informs him cryptically about Tenet, a shadow organization attempting to save the whole world from destruction.  The Protagonist will be a part of that effort in his new assignment.  To achieve his task, the Protagonist tries at first to go through the wife of the infamous Russian Oligarch, Andrei Sator, Katherine “Kat)  (Debicki), an art dealer.  But this is with the intrusion of a fellow agent Neil (Pattinson), who appears and re-appears as a helper and, seemingly at times, a foe.  

In due time, the protagonist has a clear picture of what he is up against, in terms of arms dealers, their facilitators, and a world-wide plan.  

     Typical of writer/director Christopher Nolan, he plays around with time; and in this case, time inversion, which the evil Sator is trying to perfect for his own use.  It allows for something dropped to jump back up in one’s hand and cars to travel backwards on busy freeways—lending high-tension moments to the plot, along with well choreographed hand-to-hand combat and mental/physical cruelty.  More thrilling is a reverse bungee jump up the outside of a skyscraper.  (In a filmmaking aside:  The two actors start the jump, then stuntmen take over without a noticeable cut in the frame.

     Adding to the excellence in craft, Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematographic feats maintain breathless action, accompanied by Ludwig Goransson’s always apt score. John David Washington is coming into his own as an actor earning action-figure status.  He mixes the heroic with sincerity and credibility, which adds to his appeal.  The stately Elizabeth Debicki plays Sator’s wounded wife with grace and expressive femininity, using her beautiful eyes to break through her mystique and help make her sympathetic.  Kenneth Branagh succeeds in filling his character with narcissistic loathsomeness making him easy to hate.  Bollywood’s well known star Dimple Kapadia does an admirable job in portraying a complex, woman with power.

     For Fans of Christopher Nolan Tenet will likely be satisfying and fun; others, as I did, may find it somewhat tedious to follow and feel impatience at the prolonged combat scenes.

 

Go on a time-inverted journey in Christopher Nolan’s newest thriller.

Grade:  B-                                    By Donna R. Copeland 

SPECTRE

Daniel Craig   Christopher Waltz   Lea Seydoux   Monica Bellucci   Ralph Fiennes   Ben Whishaw   Andrew Scott   Naomie Harris

          Increasing surveillance across the world and across institutions becomes the theme in Spectre, the latest James Bond adventure.  It would make George Orwell turn over in his grave, observes M (Fiennes) to O (Scott) after O reveals his plan to get 13 countries to agree to share their intelligence information with one another.  And we agree when we see an attempt to extend surveillance inside Bond’s brain later on to destroy certain memories.

        Now, however, Bond (Craig) is in hot water with his chief, M, after taking it upon himself to stop a terrorist attack in Mexico City.  Granted, there was considerable damage and bad press, which Bond doesn’t deny.  It’s just that his superiors are not aware that he has prevented a terrorist plot from coming to fruition.  That is, he has gotten onto the current scheme of his old enemy, Oberhauser (Waltz), who seems to have disappeared, but maybe not.  Knowing he is up to no good, Bond is determined to find him and sabotage his plans. 

        This will involve trips through multiple countries, leaving a trail of destruction behind, including humans, buildings, cars, helicopters, and planes.  When Bond calls on a Mr. White in an isolated cabin in wintry Austria, whom he thinks can lead him to Oberhauser, he has to promise to protect the man’s daughter, Dr. Madeline Swann (Seydoux).  Her life is in danger after White began to have second thoughts about the activities of Spectre.  But he also gives Bond information about how to locate Oberhauser.

       In many ways, Spectre is like the previous films in the series with the super heroic protagonist, the electronic gadgets in labs and cars, the need to buck the bureaucracy, thrilling car/helicopter/plane chases, unbelievable hand-to-hand combat, and beautiful women.  Unfortunately, when these components are repeated over and over in films across the years without much creativity, they get a ho-hum response.  As my friend and editor Evan Zimmerman observed, “If the filmmakers would spend less money on special effects and invest more in the script, it would be a much better movie.”

      There are clever jokes and quotable quotes sprinkled throughout the story, such as, “She wouldn’t let death get in the way of her job”, spoken by Bond about M (Judi Dench), who died in the last film, but left a message to Bond to listen to after her death.  There is a toast “To death”, spoken by one terrorist to another about a planned attack just before Bond shoots and kills them.  M tries to counsel O with “The license to kill is also a license not to kill”, advice that it not heeded.

      It may be that this franchise has run its course.  Daniel Craig has voiced his thoughts about it, implying that he doesn’t want to act in the next film, even though he has signed a contract for it.  The filmmakers (director Sam Mendes, the actors, musician Thomas Newman, and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema) are all gifted, but unless they can bring more creativity to future productions, they run the risk of appearing dated.

Go if you are a diehard James Bond fan.

Grade:  C                                                   By Donna R. Copeland