5/5 stars Christopher Nolan’s Tenet arrives both shrouded in secrecy and with the hopes of cinemas pinned on it: will it lure people back to the big screen in a post-Covid world? That’s a lot of pressure to be heaped onto one movie, but if anyone can shoulder the burden, it’s Nolan. His Dark Knight trilogy , along with Inception and Interstellar , consistently broke the mould of blockbuster filmmaking. Happily, Tenet exceeds our already sky-high expectations. An exotic high-concept espionage tale that also feels like a summation of his work to date, it is undeniably the most audacious film of his career – which is saying something. In the lead is charismatic BlackKklansman star John David Washington, who plays an unnamed spy – known only as the “Protagonist” in the credits. After a blistering opening, all set around a terrorist siege at a Ukrainian opera house, he’s recruited by a mysterious operative (Martin Donovan). His mission concerns preventing “something worse” than World War III – a journey that sees him first travel to India to trace the origins of a unique bullet, teaming him up with a louche-looking Robert Pattinson as man-on-the-ground Neil. The real prize is Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh), a violent Russian billionaire who is somehow a “broker” with the future. The Protagonist’s way to Sator is through his near-estranged wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), the mother of his young son, who is desperate to escape his stranglehold. For his part, Branagh is sensational, a menacing, vile presence in every scene he’s in. Yet this just scratches the surface, as The Protagonist learns that Sator possesses technology to “invert” objects or even people, sending them back through time. Laced with references to theoretical physics, Tenet comes across like a tentpole movie with a PhD. Fan forums will be unpicking the intricacies of the plot for years to come, while Nolan’s narrative daring leaves other spy movies looking infantile. Above all Tenet satisfies as a big-screen spectacle, cracking along at a dizzying pace thanks to editor Jennifer Lame’s deft handling of the material. Featuring jaw-dropping set pieces shot using IMAX cameras – a bungee up a building and a Boeing 747 plane crash, to name but two – this is a film of staggering ambition. Occasionally crucial lines of dialogue are muffled – a frustration given just how dense the script is – but Tenet is best approached as an experience to be felt rather than comprehensively understood. Sit back, relax and prepare to have your mind blown. Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook