An unnamed CIA agent protagonist (John David Washington) is on a mission to rescue an exposed agent and a stolen strange artifact from a Ukrainian Opera House. The mission goes sideways and he finds himself captured by unknown agents who proceed to torture information out of him in a train yard. Then he wakes up on a ship to learn he passed a test and he is recruited by an unknown secret agency called Tenet that is trying to stop World War III from happening. His mission is to find out about strange time inverted artifacts and why someone wants them. He gets fellow agent Neil (Robert Pattinson) to help him on his mission as they first question an arms dealer in Mumbai that lead them to Sator (Kenneth Branagh), a Russian Billionaire. Our protagonist learns Sator is communicating with the future and getting stuff from the future. He wants to save Sator's wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) in the process as he fights against people who can reverse time (or you can catch the bullet instead of shooting it).

TENET is a twisty spy thriller with some wonderful action sequences and an odd way of foreshadowing due to the nature of the plot. It is definitely one of the best action blockbusters of the year even though it isn't the best Christopher Nolan movie. It follows a formula of what has worked for Nolan before and he applies it in the best ways he can. It is a derivative action thriller, but it is worth a second viewing to look at the linear and non-linear narrative of TENET from a different perspective given than you have the concept of inverted time that drives a few sequences of the movie.

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