theodore62

I finally got round to viewing this film after hearing for years how complex, sophisticated, and confusing it is. I for one found it none of these. It takes the satisfying complexities of what is still Nolan's best film to date, "Memento," and attempts to graft them onto a vaguely sci-fi, vaguely James Bondish thriller that is decidedly a blockbuster action movie. The results are predictable. "Tenet" is less confusing than confused. The writing is often embarrassingly sophomoric and expository, and the one moment when exposition is needed, when someone is about to explain the "physics" of it all, the dialogue and the camera veer quickly away, preferring, apparently, to offer us up more shots of people walking backward. The acting is mostly wooden, especially the lead, with Rob Pattinson turning in the only believable performance. If you have yet to see this, maybe you already have. The future of your viewing should look to the past. Give "Memento" another watch, and a pass on "Tenet."

I have mixed feelings about the fact that Richard Yates did not live long enough to see his greatest novel made into a film, especially since the novel itself is about performance and performativity. I'm sad that he wasn't here to get a taste of the wide recognition and praise his work so richly deserves, but I am glad he did not have to witness the pallid, dull melodrama that was made of it. To be honest, I could not even sit through the entirety of this thing. Listen, the performances were good (DiCaprio is perfectly cast as Frank) and the movie captures the time of its setting well, but that is where it ends. The director of this movie seems to have a very superficial understanding of the novel, which I am here mainly to urge upon viewers of the film and for that matter on everyone. Revolutionary Road lost out to Walker Percy's The Moviegoer for The National Book Award in 1962, ironically enough. I enjoyed Percy's novel, but I will not ever read it again, while I return year after year to Yates, whose prose is so fine and perfectly turned that I can think of no other American writer besides Hemingway with whom to profitably compare him. Both writers do brilliantly what novelists today seem to have forgotten how to do, which is to tell first and foremost a riveting story. Both writers do this while at the same time constructing absolutely perfect and multi-dimensioned works of art. Indeed, I had read Revolutionary Road many times before deciding to teach it in a course I designed called "The Problem of Mimesis in Post-1945 American Literature," and when I read it to prepare to teach it, i.e. Read it critically, it was only then that I discovered how minutely and interconnectedly all of its parts enmesh and work, like the movement of a fine watch. Please read this book. It is an unqualified masterpiece, and it is a tragedy that it is not more widely appreciated for what it is.

Let me preface this review by saying that if Keanu Reeves had not been cast to play John Wick in this series, I would not have watched any of them. Action movies are generally not my thing. Even then, it is the premise--a man avenging the death of his dog--that keeps me coming back for more. To say the very least, I am a dog guy. With that out of the way, I want to extoll the virtues of this film, which are many. Visually, it is stunning. Set after set, location after location, everything here is a feast for the eyes. Also, too, the fight scenes are impeccably choreographed, and in general are extremely creative, the techno club and the Arc de Triomphe scenes being highlights for this punter. Also, too, the inclusion of the mercenary with his faithful attack dog provides an interesting shadow dimension to the film and offers up what is to me the best moment in the film, one which reestablishes Wick's moral center and made me want to cheer. To anyone who has the audacity to suggest that the film is over the top I say, This movie is over the top of the top! It's an absolutely audacious wild ride, filled with wit and mayhem, and though it clocks in at over two and a half hours, there's never a dull moment. Highly recommended. Keanu remains the coolest.