Tenet

Last night I had the chance to see Tenet at an early access screening and it is awesome!  An unnamed CIA agent, known as the Protagonist (John David Washington), takes part in an operation to rescue a spy from an opera house in Kiev.  He is ultimately captured and tortured but he consumes a cyanide pill before he is forced to reveal anything.  He survives and his superior (Martin Donovan) informs him that the mission was a test and, since he passed, he is recruited to a secret organization called Tenet.  He discovers, with the help of a Tenet scientist (Clemence Poesy) and an arms dealer (Dimple Kapadia), that a Russian oligarch named Alexei Sator (Kenneth Branagh) has access to technology invented in the future which allows objects and people to be inverted, or to travel backwards through time.  He and his handler Neil (Robert Pattinson), who may or may not be who he says he is, convince Sator's estranged wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) to help them stop Sator from triggering a catastrophic event through the manipulation of time.  The plot is fascinating but incredibly complicated with multiple characters traveling back and forth in multiple timelines (you wouldn't expect anything less from Christopher Nolan).  There were many moments when I had only the vaguest notion of what was going on but that did not detract from my enjoyment in the least!  I have not been able to stop thinking about it and I definitely plan to see it again.  The action sequences are absolutely incredible, especially a plane crash that is a little dramatic, a mind-blowing fight inside a storage facility, and a battle in which some of the soldiers are moving forward in time and some are moving backward, and what makes them truly spectacular is that the majority of the stunts are practical rather than CGI.  The cinematography puts you right in the middle of the action and it is thrilling, to say the least.  I really liked Washington as the Protagonist.  I've heard his performance criticized as being too detached but I think that works well for the character.  Debicki and Branagh have fabulous chemistry as a couple who loathe each other and I really enjoyed seeing a very playful Pattinson in an action role (I can't wait for The Batman).  The pulse-pounding score adds a lot to the tension but my one criticism would be that it sometimes overpowers the dialogue (and you definitely need to pay attention to everything that is said).  It was so much fun to watch an epic action blockbuster on the big screen again and I recommend seeing it (more than once) on the biggest screen possible!