“We’re living in a twilight world.” That’s the password The Protagonist (John David Washington) and Company use in “Tenet,” the new Christopher Nolan mind-bender, now playing only in theatres, but the movie’s premise is more “Twilight Zone” than twilight world.
The movie opens with a breathless and loud rescue sequence in an opera house in Ukraine, the first of the movie’s several eye-and-ear-popping action sequences. At stake is a mysterious component, part of a much larger device, with the power to end the world. A nuclear holocaust? “No, something worse.”
The Protagonist is tasked with piecing together the potentially world ending puzzle. “Your duty transcends national interest,” says his handler Victor (Martin Donovan). All he has to go on is a gesture and a code word, Tenet. “It will open some of the right doors,” Victor says, “but some of the wrong ones too.”
So far, “Tenet” feels like an elaborate James Bond style story, complete with exotic locations, enigmatic characters and a world that needs saving.
Then things get complicated.
The Protagonist isn’t simply dealing with the usual spy stuff, like international intrigue, a Russian oligarch or femme fatales. He’s fighting against “inversion,” a disturbance in the very fabric of time, that sees material running backwards through time, while the rest of the world moves forward. So, in the upside-down story of “Tenet,” an “inverted” weapon could affect the past as well as the present.
It’s a reversal of the way we think of linear time. It’s not time travel. The Protagonist doesn’t jump back to ancient Egypt for a quick chat with Cleopatra or zip forward to talk to his 100-year-old self. When he inverts, he is in the moment, but running counter to everyone else. “You’re not shooting the bullet,” he’s told by a researcher (Clémence Poésy). “You’re catching it.” Then, by way of clarity, she adds, “don’t try and understand it,” which may be the best advice The Protagonist has received to this point.
Teamed with shadowy operative Neil (Robert Pattinson), The Protagonist enters a topsy-turvy world of high-end art, down-and-dirty dealings with strongman Andrei Stor (Kenneth Branagh) and a clock that is moving backwards and forwards simultaneously. “You have a future in the past,” Neil says to The Protagonist.
At the centre of the action is John David Washington, hot off his Golden Globe Best Actor nomination for “BlacKkKlansman.” He’s in every scene, and whether wearing a Brooks Brother suit (in one of the film’s funniest exchanges) or hanging off the side of a building, he’s a convincing action hero with acting chops. It’s a demanding role and he pulls it off with equal parts bravado and restraint. It takes swagger to anchor a movie like this but in his relationship with Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) he reveals a flirtier, more tender side. The protagonist is a well-rounded character and, if they don’t do a “Tenet 2: Time Gone Wild” perhaps his name could be added to the list of 007 candidates.
The supporting cast, Branagh as the “all our lives in his hands” villain and Debicki as his beleaguered wife and Pattinson as the calm, cool and collected mercenary, all acquit themselves well but “Tenet’s” real star, however, is Christopher Nolan.
For blockbuster starved audiences Nolan delivers the kind of spectacle we’re used to seeing in the summer months. As per usual, he avoids CGI wherever possible in favor of practical effects. The results are eye-popping. The big set pieces—like an airplane driving through a building—don’t have the kind of digital disconnect that often comes with computer generated action. The show-stopping sequences are busy, exciting but most of all, organic, and the sense of peril (and pageantry) that comes with that is undeniable. Add to that Nolan’s use of IMAX cameras and you have wild action that fills the big screen in every way.
With a complicated story comes drawbacks. In the first hour there is a lot of exposition. People ask questions—Do you know what a free port is? How does inversion work?—while others take the time to answer them all in an effort to keep the audience in the loop. There’s a lot of talk about theories and plans but Nolan keeps things lively with lightning fast—with a capital “F”— pacing.
Will you understand the puzzles of “Tenet’s” time manipulation story? Maybe, maybe not. It’s definitely a movie that will hold up to multiple viewings, revealing new info and fostering more understanding of the plot each time. The trippy last hour is jam packed with artfully arranged action scenes that manipulate time in increasingly psychedelic ways. While you may feel lost in time as the movie careens toward the end of its 150-minute running time with an involved and inversive climax that weaves the past into the fabric of The Protagonist’s mission, you may wish you could invert time and relive the story again. And you can, for the price of a ticket.
“Tenet” opens in over 70 countries worldwide, including Europe and Canada, starting on Wednesday, August 26.
Richard and CP24 anchor Nathan Downer have a look at the weekend’s new movies including “The Dark Tower,” the eco-documentary “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power,” the latest Kathryn Bigelow film “Detroit” and the culinary road trip of “The Trip to Spain.”
It’s hard to know exactly how to categorize “The Trip” movies. Since 2010 Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon have co-starred in a series of British television travel shows, later cut down to feature length movies for North America.
The first saw the dynamic duo do a restaurant tour of northern England, then came “The trip to Italy” where they followed in the footsteps of early 19th century English poets on the Grand Tour. This time around trade plates of pasta for pintxos and paella in “The trip to Spain.”
The films are semi-fictional ad libbed culinary road trip adventures that have become increasingly melancholy as the odometer clocks each passing mile. They aren’t documentaries nor are they Food Network style travel shows. They are funny, although the laughs are fewer and further a part in the new, but they also contain moments of profound despondency. Sometimes they seem to be little more than a showcase for Coogan and Brydon’s prodigious gifts of celebrity mimicry, other times they are pathos dipped examinations of aging.
The third course on their culinary trip sees these two—imagine an intellectual version of The Two Ronnies—sample the best of Spain’s New Traditional restaurants, take in the sights but they spend most of their time not appreciating the beautiful coastal scenery but hilariously poking fun at a who’s who of Hollywood, including Al Pacino, Sean Connery and Woody Allen.
Wedged between the jokes and Michael Caine impressions is Coogan’s dissatisfaction, both personal and professional. Contrasted with Brydon’s happy family life and career, Coogan’s fear of becoming last week’s news as he enters his fifties gives the film an edge the others haven’t had. That means “The Trip to Spain” isn’t nearly all-out funny as the others, but it does have more substance. The others weren’t exactly empty calories but this one feels weightier.
“The Trip to Spain” features much of the stuff fans expect—Brydon’s “small man in a box” voice makes an appearance and Coogan’s way with words gives us culinary descriptions like, “life affirming butter”—but director Michael Winterbottom is clearly in a Cervantes state of mind as he sets his Don Quixote and Sancho Panza off on a new Spanish adventure.
Welcome to the House of Crouse. In “Maudie” Ethan Hawke plays a gruff Nova Scotian man who learns how to love. How brusque is he? “You walk funny,” he says when he first meets her. “You a cripple? You sick?” Not exactly a charmer. We talk about the film and his love of Nova Scotia. Then we go long with Ann-Margret, talking about her life, career–including a twenty-two foot on-stage tumble that almost ended her career–and her new movie, Going in Style. It’s all good stuff so c’mon in and sit a spell!
A new feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at “Smurfs: The Lost Village,” “Going in Style” and “Song top Song.”
Richard and CP24 anchor Jamie Gutfreund have a look at the weekend’s new movies, “Smurfs: The Lost Village,” “Going in Style,” “Song to Song” and the documentary “Giants of Africa.”
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the big weekend movies, the “Smurfs: The Lost Village,” “Going in Style,” “Song to Song” and the documentary “Giants of Africa.”
“Going in Style” is a blistering social commentary disguised as an old coot caper comedy. Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin play factory workers who did all the right things only to have the system give them the middle finger in old age.
A remake from the 1979 George Burns, Art Carney, and Lee Strasberg adventure “Going in Style,” the movie begins with Joe (Caine) confronting his condescending bank manager (John Pais). The older man’s mortgage has tripled and he will soon be evicted from his home. As they argue, outside the manager’s office armed masked men invade the bank, scooping handfuls of cash from the tellers. Joe is unharmed in the heist—one of the thieves tells him, “It is a culture’s duty to take care of the elderly.”—and later excitedly tells his family and friends Willie (Freeman) and Al (Arkin) about the robbery.
The afternoon’s excitement aside, Joe’s financial situation is still dire. His old company, now in the midst of a takeover, has frozen all pension cheques. He needs to come up with a way to get his hands on some cash. Ditto for Willie, who needs a new kidney and Al who can barely afford to feed himself.
When their favourite waitress gives them a free piece of pie with the truism, “Everybody deserves pie,” it dawns on Joe that she’s right. “We should be having our pie and eating it too,” he says, hatching a plan to steal back their pensions. “These banks practically destroyed this country and nothing ever happened to them,” he says. “If we get caught we get a bed, three meals a day and free healthcare.”
“Going in Style” then drops the social commentary and becomes a heist flick. Think “The Italian Job” with electric wheelchairs and you’ll get the idea.
Much of the charm of “Going in Style” comes from watching Caine, Freeman and Arkin glide—OK, it’s more like shuffle—through this material. There’s nothing particularly new here, we’ve seen loads of elderly men take back their lives on film in recent years, but subtext and actor goodwill elevate this slight story.
Caine, Freeman and Arkin are formidable actors but expertly portray the invisibility that can come with old age. As eighty-somethings they are unseen—banks take advantage of them, the police ignore them—until they take their future into their own hands. The story is implausible but by the time the heist happens you want the best for these grandpas, no matter how silly the story gets.
“Going in Style” is part knockabout comedy, part rage against the machine. Director Zach Braff adds in just enough sentimentality and slapstick to frame the film’s message of “having a pie of pie whenever the hell I want to!”
“We’re living in a twilight world.” That’s the password The Protagonist (John David Washington) and Company use in “Tenet,” the new Christopher Nolan mind-bender, now playing only in theatres, but the movie’s premise is more “Twilight Zone” than twilight world.
