TENET (2020) - Full Movie Script Reading

Review link: I Read the Entire Tenet Screenplay - ...














Tenet (film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigationJump to search
Tenet
The upper half of a man in a suit pointing a gun. The image is mirrored diagonally, with the word TENET in the middle.
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Written by Christopher Nolan
Produced by
Emma Thomas
Christopher Nolan
Starring
John David Washington
Robert Pattinson
Elizabeth Debicki
Dimple Kapadia
Michael Caine
Kenneth Branagh
Cinematography Hoyte van Hoytema
Edited by Jennifer Lame
Music by Ludwig Göransson
Production
company
Syncopy
Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
Release dates
August 26, 2020 (United Kingdom)
September 3, 2020 (United States)
Running time 150 minutes
Countries
United Kingdom
United States
Language English
Budget $205 million[1]
Box office $365.3 million[2]
Tenet is a 2020 science fiction action thriller film directed, written and co-produced (with his wife Emma Thomas) by Christopher Nolan. A co-production between the United Kingdom and the United States, it stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh. The film follows a Central Intelligence Agency agent who learns how to manipulate the flow of time to prevent an attack from the future that threatens to annihilate the present world. Nolan continued his relationship with Warner Bros. and Syncopy for both the production and the distribution of the film.

Nolan took more than five years to write the screenplay after deliberating about Tenet's central ideas for over a decade. Pre-production began in late 2018, casting took place in March 2019, and principal photography lasted six months, from May to November, in Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shot on 65 mm film and IMAX.

After being delayed three times because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tenet was released in the United Kingdom on August 26, 2020, and in the United States on September 3, 2020, in IMAX, 35 mm, and 70 mm. It was the first Hollywood tent-pole to open in theaters after the pandemic shutdown, and grossed $363 million worldwide, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2020. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its ambition, direction, score, visual effects, action sequences, and Washington, Debicki and Pattinson's performances, but criticized its story, characters, and sound mixing.[3] It won the award for Best Visual Effects at the 93rd Academy Awards, where it was also nominated for Best Production Design.

Plot
A CIA operative, the Protagonist, participates in an extraction at the Kyiv Opera House. His team retrieves an artifact but he is captured, tortured by mercenaries, and ultimately consumes a suicide pill.

Some time later, the Protagonist awakens to learn the artifact was lost and the pill was a fake, designed as a test. An organization called Tenet recruits him and briefs him on bullets with "inverted" entropy, meaning they move backward through time. After meeting his handler, Neil, they trace the inverted bullets to arms dealer Priya Singh in Mumbai.

The pair discovers that Priya is a member of Tenet, and that her cartridges were purchased and inverted by Russian oligarch Andrei Sator. The Protagonist approaches Sator's estranged wife, Kat, an art appraiser who authenticated a forged Goya drawing that Sator purchased from an acquaintance of hers. Sator discovered Kat's mistake and is using it to blackmail her.

In exchange for Kat's help, the Protagonist and Neil attempt to steal the drawing from Sator's freeport storage facility at the Oslo Airport, where they fend off two masked men who emerge from a "turnstile". In Mumbai, Priya later explains these turnstiles invert the entropy of objects and people, so the masked men were the same man traveling in opposite directions through time.

On the Amalfi Coast, Kat introduces the Protagonist to Sator, who reveals he still has the drawing. Sator, enraged and jealous, plans to kill the Protagonist, but the Protagonist instead saves Sator's life when Kat attempts to drown him. The men strike a partnership to retrieve a case from Kyiv that supposedly contains plutonium-241 (though is later revealed the case contains another artifact).


The ancient Sator Square, which inspired the film's title, as well as two character names (Sator and Arepo, the Goya forger), the location of the opening sequence (Opera), and the name of Sator's construction company (Rotas).