A James Bond film with added physics no one understands: Tenet reviewed

Tenet is the latest high-concept, time-bending blockbuster from Christopher Nolan and it’s the film that (unofficially) reopens cinemas in the UK. It has everything that fans of Inception or Interstellar might want. There are spectacular set pieces. There’s time going forwards and then reversing, so it’s bullets flying back into the gun as crashed cars right themselves. There is a relentlessly pounding soundtrack. There is Sir Michael Caine playing Sir Michael Caine — his character is called Sir Michael Crosby but I wasn’t fooled — and as for the plot? Incoherent. Which fans seem to like. (‘I can’t explain any of it but it’s genius,’ I heard one say on the radio the other day. ‘A masterpiece.’) I gave up even trying to figure out what was happening an hour into the two and a half hours, and I’d like to say I then settled back to enjoy it — oh look, a high-rise block of flats un-bombing itself! — but once the narrative propulsion was lost I found myself praying for time to move forwards quickly, quickly, quickly.