‘Tenet’ Reviews Are In, Hailed As ‘Perfect Cinema,’ But Not Christopher Nolan’s Best
Reviews have been piling in for Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, one of the most anticipated motion pictures of 2020. The film has been pushed back numerous times due to the worldwide health crisis. What was supposed to be a summer blockbuster will now be a fall treat with a tentative release date of September 3. Those lucky enough to attend a screening in London this week have shared their reviews, which is good enough for a score of 88 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Tenet is being hailed as another visual masterpiece by the director, with a story that’s hard to follow at times. Both of these sentiments are nothing new for Nolan films, as it seems to be a trend with hits like Inception and Interstellar. The subject of time seems to be at the center of the movie, with many critics noting it’s one of the more difficult films to understand as the minutes tick on, but they feel that it’s not too much of a distraction.
“We’re never meant to know what exactly is going on at any one moment, but we will be – we must be – entertained by the overwhelming nonsense of it all,” Barry Hertz of Globe and Mail wrote.
Another critic called it a “pleasurable” headache, suggesting minds will be racing to decipher the plot in the best way.
When it comes to action, it looks like the flick is going to be one of the best in Nolan’s catalog.
“The movie is a race against a clock that defies everything we know about time. Massively scaled sequences have time moving forward and backwards and zigzagging all at once. The action exceeds anything Nolan has ever done before,” critic Radheyan Simonpillai wrote.
This is quite the compliment as The Dark Knight has some of the best action to ever grace a superhero flick, and is often hailed as Nolan’s best work ever. If Tenet can out-action the caped-crusader film, fans are surely in for a treat come September.
The movie does have some flaws according to some, but the good definitely outweighs the bad.
“The most important film of the year is a heavy weight to carry, and Tenet for the most part pulls it off. This may not be a perfect film but it could just be perfect cinema,” Rosie Fletcher of Den of Geek claimed.
Some of the negative reviews believe Tenet is nothing but “smoke rings” and a complete “mess.” While all have admitted it is stunning to watch, there are some critics who think the picture wasn’t what it was choked up to be.
When compared to other works from Nolan, Tenet falls behind The Dark Knight (94 percent), Memento (93 percent), Side by Side (93 percent), Dunkirk (92 percent), and Insomnia (92 percent) in terms of its Rotten Tomatoes score.
