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Tenet

  • 2020
  • PG-13
  • 2h 30m
IMDb RATING
7.3/10
530K
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
202
44
Dimple Kapadia, John David Washington, and Robert Pattinson in Tenet (2020)
Armed with only one word, Tenet, and fighting for the survival of the entire world, a Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.
Play trailer3:10
18 Videos
99+ Photos
ActionSci-FiThriller

Armed with only one word, Tenet, and fighting for the survival of the entire world, a Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold i... Read allArmed with only one word, Tenet, and fighting for the survival of the entire world, a Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.Armed with only one word, Tenet, and fighting for the survival of the entire world, a Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.

  • Director
    • Christopher Nolan
  • Writer
    • Christopher Nolan
  • Stars
    • John David Washington
    • Robert Pattinson
    • Elizabeth Debicki
  • See production, box office & company info
  • IMDb RATING
    7.3/10
    530K
    YOUR RATING
    POPULARITY
    202
    44
    • Director
      • Christopher Nolan
    • Writer
      • Christopher Nolan
    • Stars
      • John David Washington
      • Robert Pattinson
      • Elizabeth Debicki
    • 5.6KUser reviews
    • 513Critic reviews
    • 69Metascore
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Won 1 Oscar
      • 50 wins & 137 nominations total

    Videos18

    Final Trailer
    Trailer 3:10
    Watch Final Trailer
    Trailer #2
    Trailer 2:51
    Watch Trailer #2
    Official Trailer
    Trailer 2:17
    Watch Official Trailer
    Tenet
    Trailer 2:03
    Watch Tenet
    Trailer 2
    Trailer 2:59
    Watch Trailer 2
    Art of the Crew | Production Design
    Clip 1:02
    Watch Art of the Crew | Production Design
    'Tenet' Fan Theories: What We Got Right (and Wrong)
    Clip 5:09
    Watch 'Tenet' Fan Theories: What We Got Right (and Wrong)
    A Guide to the Films of Christopher Nolan
    Clip 2:03
    Watch A Guide to the Films of Christopher Nolan
    What We Know About Christopher Nolan's 'Tenet'
    Clip 2:55
    Watch What We Know About Christopher Nolan's 'Tenet'
    What We Know About Christopher Nolan's 'Tenet' | Hindi Dubbed
    Clip 2:55
    Watch What We Know About Christopher Nolan's 'Tenet' | Hindi Dubbed
    What We Know About 'Tenet' ... So Far
    Clip 2:55
    Watch What We Know About 'Tenet' ... So Far
    The Rise of John David Washington
    Clip 3:55
    Watch The Rise of John David Washington

    Photos308

    John David Washington in Tenet (2020)
    John David Washington and Elizabeth Debicki in Tenet (2020)
    John David Washington in Tenet (2020)
    Robert Pattinson in Tenet (2020)
    John David Washington in Tenet (2020)
    John David Washington in Tenet (2020)
    John David Washington in Tenet (2020)
    John David Washington and Robert Pattinson in Tenet (2020)
    John David Washington in Tenet (2020)
    John David Washington and Robert Pattinson in Tenet (2020)
    John David Washington in Tenet (2020)
    Elizabeth Debicki in Tenet (2020)

    Top cast

    Edit
    John David Washington
    John David Washington
    • Protagonist
    Robert Pattinson
    Robert Pattinson
    • Neil
    Elizabeth Debicki
    Elizabeth Debicki
    • Kat
    Juhan Ulfsak
    Juhan Ulfsak
    • Passenger
    Jefferson Hall
    Jefferson Hall
    • Well-Dressed Man
    Ivo Uukkivi
    • Uniformed Official
    Andrew Howard
    Andrew Howard
    • Driver
    Rich Ceraulo Ko
    Rich Ceraulo Ko
    • SWAT…
    Jonathan Camp
    Jonathan Camp
    • SWAT 2
    Wes Chatham
    Wes Chatham
    • SWAT 3
    Sander Rebane
    • Ukrainian SWAT
    Martin Donovan
    Martin Donovan
    • Fay
    Clémence Poésy
    Clémence Poésy
    • Barbara
    Josh Stewart
    Josh Stewart
    • Male Voice
    • (voice)
    Dimple Kapadia
    Dimple Kapadia
    • Priya
    Denzil Smith
    Denzil Smith
    • Sanjay
    Jeremy Theobald
    Jeremy Theobald
    • Steward
    Michael Caine
    Michael Caine
    • Crosby
    • Director
      • Christopher Nolan
    • Writer
      • Christopher Nolan
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      The production team purchased and then crashed a real 747 airplane into a hangar. The stunt was all practical effects, with no visual effects or CGI. Director Christopher Nolan had originally planned to use miniatures and set-piece builds. However, while scouting for locations in Victorville, California, the team discovered a massive array of old planes, and it became apparent that it would actually be more efficient to buy a real plane of the real size and to perform the sequence for real on camera.
    • Goofs
      On many occasions during the movie, some characters are manipulating gold bars too easily relatively to the gold's density. The larger gold bars from the plane scene weigh about 20kg and would not be easily picked up with one hand. The smaller bars from the crate would weigh about 5kg.
    • Quotes

      The Protagonist: You wanna crash a plane?

      Neil: Well, not from the air. Don't be so dramatic.

      The Protagonist: ...well, how big a plane?

      Neil: That part is a little dramatic.

    • Crazy credits
      The Warner Bros and Syncopy logos are respectively shaded red and blue, the colors used in the film to represent normal/inverted time.
    • Alternate versions
      The United Kingdom subsidiary of Warner Bros. to maximize their UK cinema audiences, made their "Distributors Cuts" as recommended by the BBFC, to remove 9.3 seconds of footage from the cinema theatrical version, to secure their preferred "12A BBFC" rating. Removed from 72:34 until 72:43 minutes, showing Sator (Kenneth Branagh) during a violent fight, repeatedly kicking his wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki). When the original 150:00 minutes version was seen for advice, the BBFC indicated that for the uncut version, the "15 BBFC" rating was likely. The "12A BBFC" rating version was later released on home video in the UK, with the "12 BBFC" rating.
    • Connections
      Featured in OWV Updates: Multimedia Update (31/12/2019) - Last Update of 2019/OWV Awards #4 (2019)
    • Soundtracks
      The Plan
      Written by Travis Scott (as Jacques Webster), Wonda Gurl (as Ebony Naomi Oshunrinde) and Ludwig Göransson

      Performed by Travis Scott

      Produced by Ludwig Göransson and Wonda Gurl

      Travis Scott appears courtesy of Cactus Jack/Epic Records

      By arrangement with Sony Music Entertainment

    User reviews5.6K

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    8/10
    Christopher Nolan does James Bond -- with time travel!
    I have a huge amount of respect for director Christopher Nolan. His recent films Inception, Interstellar, and Dunkirk are three of the best things I've ever seen on film and I automatically want to see whatever new production he comes out with. So, I'm just back from the theater having seen Tenet for the first time (I'm pretty sure there will be a second and third time) and in one sense I have no idea what rating to give. At a minimum it would be worth at least 6/10 for its technical quality alone. But it might be 10/10 for the quality of its fiendishly intricate storyline, which leaves your head spinning by the end. But it' s not without a few problems (see below). So, OK -- 8/10 it is.

    Among Nolan's previous works I'd say 'Tenet' owes the most to 'Inception' for its complex, ever-shifting, multilayered plot. For Inception it was the Russian-doll dreamworlds within dreamworlds. For Tenet, it's playing with time and time reversal (as you see from any trailer or synopsis out there). We've had any number of time-travel movies before, and one sure thing they're good for is setting up paradoxes, but the way Nolan deploys this on screen is at times genuinely and startlingly new (as just one example, there's a car chase on a busy freeway where one car is speeding backwards but time-reversed, so from its POV it's racing forward, which is why it can travel that fast driving backward ... and there are many more scenes that I won't spoil.) There are things here we've never seen on screen before.

    In the barest of bare-bones summary, the plot is all about a hunt for The Algorithm, something that enables this messing with the timeline The uber-evil Andrei (Kenneth Branagh) aims to use it to start WW III, or even (in a total burst of nihilism) ring down the curtain on all of reality. The shadowy team called Tenet aims to stop this. Keep up with it if you can. On the surface, it's an excellent James Bond imitation. Exposition scenes are followed by thunderous action, rinse, repeat -- pretty much from start to finish. How confused you are at any given moment depends (like Inception) on how many questions are running through your mind: why are we in THIS location now, who's doing what to whom, and what precisely are the characters after? The overall impression, though (again, like Inception) is that there IS substance underneath the high-octane surface and that repeated viewings and study will bring it out. We'll see.

    So the production quality is, as usual for Nolan, first-rate. There are big, bravura scenes (wait till you see the big opener in a concert hall) but plenty of close, person-to-person ones to balance. One thing that might be a little jarring is that the scene-to-scene transitions are extremely abrupt and extremely frequent, and I assume that's deliberate -- there's no time for viewers to think even if we want to. But I'll accept that as a feature rather than a bug. The overall flow isn't necessarily helped by the music score (by Ludwig Goransson), which is epic but also insistent and omnipresent. Too much of a good thing. Lots of the personal scenes would just have worked better for me with no background score stepping on the dialog.

    For the acting: I thought John David Washington (as The Protagonist) was OK but rather wooden, and he's on screen most of the time. I kept visualizing Will Smith in the part instead -- but maybe he'd have taken over the movie too much and that's not the result Nolan wanted? I don't know. But I liked Robert Pattinson and Elizabeth Debicki quite a lot. They both have substantial, essential roles and they have more nuance and humanity than anything they've done before. Kenneth Branagh still can't do a good Russian accent (though to be fair, not many native-English actors can) and although he's fine, I think as an actor he's much better suited to Shakespeare or Hercule Poirot. There's a big cast of smaller roles (among which is the always-welcome Michael Caine), adding to the difficulty of keeping up with what's developing.

    So there it is. I'm looking forward to figuring out more of what's under the hood of this thing.
    helpful•133
    83
    • gcsman
    • Sep 7, 2020

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    FAQ25

    • Who has the most screen time in the movie?
    • Why does the aspect ratio change in the film and does it affect the story in any way?
    • Was the word "tenet" used in the movie because it's a palindrome?

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • September 3, 2020 (United States)
    • Countries of origin
      • United States
      • United Kingdom
    • Official sites
      • Official Facebook
      • Official Instagram
    • Languages
      • English
      • Russian
      • Ukrainian
      • Estonian
      • Norwegian
      • Hindi
    • Also known as
      • Merry-Go-Round
    • Filming locations
      • Linnahall, Tallinn, Estonia(national opera house Kyiv)
    • Production companies
      • Warner Bros.
      • Syncopy
      • Warner Bros.
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    • Budget
      • $205,000,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $58,504,105
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $9,353,090
      • Sep 6, 2020
    • Gross worldwide
      • $365,304,105
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      2 hours 30 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • IMAX 6-Track
      • Dolby Digital
      • Sonics-DDP
      • Datasat

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