Tenet review: Christopher Nolan's thriller is a palindromic dud

Catherine Shoard

 @catherineshoard

Fri 21 Aug 2020 17.00 BSTLast modified on Fri 21 Aug 2020 21.39 BST

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2 / 5 stars2 out of 5 stars.     Elizabeth Debicki, left, and John David Washington in Tenet. Photograph: Melinda Sue Gordon/AP

No wonder Christopher Nolan thinks Tenet can save cinema. That’s a doddle compared to the challenge faced in his film, which, we’re frequently reminded, is a proper whopper. Prevent world war three? Bigger. Avoid armageddon? Worse. To spell it out would be a spoiler, but think 9/11 times a hundred, to quote Team America: World Police, a film Tenet faintly resembles. The fate of a few multiplexes is small fry.

Lucky, really, because Tenet is not a movie it’s worth the nervous braving a trip to the big screen to see, no matter how safe it is. I’m not even sure that, in five years’ time, it’d be worth staying up to catch on telly. To say so is sad, perhaps heretical. But for audiences to abandon their living rooms in the long term, the first carrot had better not leave a bad taste.