Tenet (Christopher Nolan) *spoilers from post 475*

The full, unadulterated Christopher Nolan Cinema Experience (c) - for better and for worse.

Very much the natural next step in Nolan's obsession with manipulating time, from the temporally playful editing of Dunkirk to the proudly high-concept setpieces of Inception and non-chronological wit of Memento. The central 'gimmick' of this film is less immediately obvious than the 'dream heist' setup of Inception, and certainly isn't quite as trailer friendly as the rotating centrepiece room of that film. But especially in the second half Nolan goes to town with his backwards and forward trickery, producing the sort of distinctively cynical, slick sessions of multiplex-friendly mind-****ery the man has built his career on. The film starts with multiple bangs via a great prologue, and is at its best with a series of extended, bombastic setpieces of high stakes and multiple interwoven perspectives. Bombast, booming soundtrack and indulgent action: pure Nolan.

It's also pure Nolan in all the bad ways too. The first hour after the prologue is painful - there's a lot of getting the pieces into place, and while they do pay off for the most part, it doesn't make watching the plot (which manages that familiar big budget thriller trick of being simple and over complicated simultaneously) machinations any more enjoyable. The film tries desperately hard to have an emotional core, but a bland protagonist neuters out most of the potential in that regard. Pattinson is unsurprisingly the best in cast; Debicki does her best with a very 'female character in a Christopher Nolan film' role; and Branagh is like a token 90s schlock villain with a Russian accent.

There's also the niggling sense that Nolan is being a bit too much of a smartarse for his own good: almost like he's demanding we be impressed by his time-bending narrative shenanigans as they unfold with the sort of clinical precision you expect from the man. No doubt there are pleasures to be found in seeing some of said developments unfold, but it's relentless and exhausting too. Inception explained itself too clearly, and this almost has the opposite problem: for a film loaded with exposition, it's too breathless for the big concepts to really land before we're rushed forward. But honestly I reckon that's a consequence of Nolan's increasingly frantic, uneasy editing: the bloody thing feels like it has been stuck together with duct tape. It feels like every minute of its 2.5 hours, while many scenes still needed more space to actually work.

Like all Nolan films, though, what you're here for is ultimately a big, dumb, brash genre film with a 'smart' veneer. This is basically the spy film homage of the snow section in Inception blown into feature length - essentially a Bond film with weirdly specific time travel. It's a treat on the big screen, although also the kind of film you frequently want to shout out in frustration. It'll offer plenty of ammo for those who eagerly anticipate Nolan's every big summer event movie, and more deadly inverted ammo for those who feel the man has lost the run of himself.

If you see one film back in the reopened cinemas? Babyteeth is better But ultimately this is the kind of big screen spectacle still worth social distancing for, even if it feels like Christopher Nolan is tediously daring you to watch it twice so you'll understand the darn internet timeline diagrams and YouTube explainers we can anticipate any day now.

Shame this film doesn’t feature the Hans Zimmer classic No Time For Caution (Except For During A Pandemic, When You Should Cautiously Evaluate The Risk Of Going To The Cinema Based On The Status Of The Virus In Your Local Area)