Tenet - Game Infinite Review (Non-Spoiler)

Christopher Nolan is my absolute all time favorite director. Films such as The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar, and The Dark Knight are some my all time favorite films. His directive and visual styles are so instantly recognizable but unique to him. I believe it is possible to feel and know that a film is a Nolan film even before he is credited in a trailer.

After taking on dreams, magicians, super heroes, and space travel, Nolan takes on my absolute favorite subject in cinema, Time Travel. Time Travel narratives have been done countless times, but Tenet somehow manages to find a unique approach. Instead of time machines and portals, Tenet introduces the idea of "reverse entropy", objects that are traveling backwards in time. The film calls this "Inversion". We see it the world and characters moving forward in time, while select objects or even people are moving literally backwards from our perspective. We are first introduced to the concept with a bullet being shown flying backwards from a bullet impact point and being “caught” by a gun.

(Official Trailer)

Eventually we see things from the perspective of an “inverted” person, and they move normally but from the perspective of the world around them essentially rewinding. It’s a fascinating concept that plays with causality in fascinating ways. The film also introduces the idea that some events are playing backwards while others move forward simultaneously.

My favorite action moment in the film is in the third act during a massive combat sequence, we see a complex action sequence of a building being destroyed backward and blown up by a forward time moving rocket and one backward moving rocket. It’s so bizare looking it’s impossible to describe.

I don’t want to say too much without spoiling the film but it is an absolutely phenomenal take on the time travel genre and is definitively Christopher Nolan in style. It is weird, and a must re-watch film to grasp all of it. It is by far the best film of the year (which understandably had less competition), and holds up well to his all time greats.