| Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: September 3, 2020 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
33
Mixed:
17
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Aug 21, 2020
Tenet is a practically perfect (re)introduction to the big screen. Whether audiences are ready – where safe – to return to cinemas en masse is another question entirely. Certainly, Tenet’s a more challenging film than some may be comfortable with after a five-month absence, but this is an all-too-rare example of a master filmmaker putting everything on the table with, you sense, not a modicum of his vision compromised. The stakes have never been higher, but Tenet is exactly the film cinemas need right now.
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The TelegraphAug 21, 2020
The depth, subtlety and wit of Pattinson and Debicki’s performances only becomes fully apparent once you know where Tenet is going, or perhaps that should be where it’s been. Still confused? Don’t be. Or rather do be, and savour it. This is a film that will cause many to throw up their hands in bamboozlement – and many more, I hope, to clasp theirs in awe and delight.
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Aug 21, 2020
Tenet is not Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece, but it is another thrilling entry into his canon. In a world where blockbuster cinema is dominated by franchises and sequels, it serves as an accomplished demonstration of the pleasures of unconnected and non-serialised original storytelling. But while it does tread new ground, Tenet is the ‘safest’ film from Christopher Nolan in some years. Following two recent ambitious movies from the filmmaker, Tenet feels a little conservative, as if Nolan’s style is a franchise rather than a framework. Despite this, it remains more interesting than most other tentpole movies and acts as a beacon for the director’s strengths.
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RogerEbert.comAug 26, 2020
If Tenet can be a hard movie to engage with emotionally or even comprehend narratively, that doesn't take away from its craftsmanship on a technical level. It’s an impressive film simply to experience, bombarding the viewer with bombastic sound design and gorgeous widescreen cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema.
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Aug 21, 2020
Aesthetically—accompanied by Ludwig Göransson’s aggressively throbbing score—Tenet is the cinematic spectacle you’ve imagined...The plot, however, is where things start to falter. Tenet is as convoluted—if not more so—than Inception or Interstellar, and its tangled narrative occasionally fails to completely unknot itself (although that may be the point).
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SlashfilmAug 21, 2020
No other artform could quite present such a collision of time, place, idea and emotion, and it’s clear that Nolan’s pure intent is to give us the utmost of what this medium can uniquely provide. At its best this is a ride that manages to be viscerally thrilling while still being emotionally and intellectually engaging, all in ways that are truly, uniquely cinematic. In other words, say what you will about the tenets of Tenet, at least it has an ethos.
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Aug 21, 2020
Aug 21, 2020
Aug 21, 2020
It’s exhilarating, in a “Fast & Furious” sort of way, especially as so many of the stunts are done for real rather than with CGI. It helps, too, that the swaggering Washington and the smirking Pattinson make a likable double act. But it all happens so quickly, with such brief explanations and so little breathing space, that the story is tough to follow, and therefore tough to care about.
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PolygonAug 27, 2020
As it turns out, “Don’t try to understand it, feel it” is mixed advice. Viewers won’t be able to fully understand Tenet’s dialogue, and they’re likely to have the same problem in trying to understand its convoluted plot. But there isn’t much there to feel, either, making the experience feel more like a math exam than a mesmerizing action film.
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Sep 9, 2020
There’s a chilliness to Tenet that I haven’t felt in his previous work. The stakes, presumably, couldn’t be higher — both onscreen and offscreen — but after watching the movie, I don’t understand why I was meant to care. As an intellectual exercise, Tenet is very interesting, if not entirely successful. As a movie, I’m not so sure.
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Aug 21, 2020
You have to hand it to Nolan. To use the old expression, he puts the money on the screen, delivering the kind of noisy, extravagant and fundamentally ridiculous pulp fiction which reminds you why you go to the cinema. But it collapses under the weight of all the plot strands and concepts stuffed into it. You don’t get the impression, which you usually get from his films, that every element is precisely where it should be. Some parts of it go on too long, others not long enough. It’s a treat to see a really big film again, but a smaller one might have been better.
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Aug 21, 2020
All this delicious incident has the makings of a gung-ho entertainment – Ian Fleming as mounted by Nasa. Unfortunately that’s not what we get. Even if we were brave enough to try, we would not be capable of spoiling a plot so wilfully obtuse it demands repeat viewings to disentangle.
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The Film StageAug 24, 2020
It is somewhat disappointing to leave a movie without a full grasp of what you’ve just watched. Still, there’s something rather wonderful in seeing a filmmaker take a proper swing with an original concept in a tentpole world increasingly populated by sequels, remakes, and reboots. And while Tenet might not make it easy to connect the dots, it’s still a thrilling ride to herald the return of cinema-going.
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Dec 19, 2020
This is a bad film by a good filmmaker. It has the veneer of substantiality, but it’s unsubstantial. It is the product of sincere conviction and artistic confidence, but both were misguided. Every filmmaker needs to take the occasional chance, as Christopher Nolan did with “Tenet.” Not all chances pay off.
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Sep 3, 2020
IndieWireAug 21, 2020
What kind of picture is it? Big, certainly: IMAX-scaled, and a hefty 150 minutes even after a visibly ruthless edit. It’s clever, too — yes, the palindromic title has some narrative correlation — albeit in an exhausting, rather joyless way. As second comings go, Tenet is like witnessing a Sermon on the Mount preached by a savior who speaks exclusively in dour, drawn-out riddles. Any awe is flattened by follow-up questions.
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