Why ‘Tenet’ Was the Wrong Movie at the Wrong Time (Column)
“ Tenet ” is the only movie I’ve seen in which I couldn’t follow a fistfight. John David Washington , as an unnamed CIA agent, is facing an enemy combatant who’s dressed in what looks like riot gear. As the two pummel each other, we’re supposed to hone in on the fact that Washington’s character is moving forward in time while his antagonist is moving backward in time. I honed in, all right. I furrowed my brain and concentrated on every movement. Yet the more I honed, the more questions I had. Questions like: Does the person moving backward in time have an advantage? Is the outcome of the fight preordained? If so, what’s at stake? And by the way, WTF is going on in this fight anyway? The questions were not fun ones. It felt, rather, as if I was designing a pop quiz for myself, one that I was doomed to fail. (If I were teaching a course in “Tenet,” my one homework assignment would be: Find yourself a good James Bond thriller and watch that instead.) I do realize that in...