Tenet Parent Guide

The Protagonist (John David Washington) is a CIA agent co-operating with the Russians to steal a strange object, working under cover of a terrorist attack on an opera house in Kyiv. Although they make it out of the building with the item, the Russians soon realize that The Protagonist is not on their side, and torture him to find out who he’s working for – but The Protagonist is having none of it, and takes his suicide pill.

Waking up (always a surprise after killing yourself), The Protagonist is informed that he has been recruited to a secret organization fighting in a temporal cold war against an unknown entity in the future. He is now tasked with tracing some of the technology they’ve hidden in their past – his present – to its source: a Russian oligarch and arms dealer named Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh), who has an uncanny ability to know what’s coming…

Does any of that make sense to you? If not, you don’t want to see this film. It gets more complex from here – significantly more complex. And maybe it was just my theater, but I was having a hard time following the dialogue, as several characters often wear masks and have a variety of accents – none of which is conducive to tracking either the plot (important to my enjoyment of the film) or the profanity (important to my job and the only reason I’m in a theater during a global pandemic in the first place).

But from what I’ve read on the film’s Wikipedia page, the plot mostly makes sense, provided you’re patient and can understand the dialogue. The real draw for this movie is the effects which are stunning. Director Christopher Nolan has an excellent reputation for big effects shots – see the real semi-truck he flipped for The Dark Knight. This one seems to involve crashing a real 747, which is an amazing shot to watch.

In spite of that, I’m going to recommend not seeing this in a theatre. It just isn’t worth it, and for two reasons: First, I would have killed to see this with subtitles (and maybe I’m just an old man but that’s how it is), and secondly you have to be insane to risk catching Covid-19 to watch a movie. This one just isn’t worth the risk – plus the lengthy runtime means you’re going to be wearing a mask for two and a half uninterrupted hours: my face still feels weird and I’ve been home for an hour now. This is a really interesting film, and it will be just as interesting when you can watch it without ruminating on the health of your fellow moviegoers.