Source: Warner Bros.: Blu-ray, 2020.
Year: 2020
Director: Christopher Nolan
Action Stars:
Genre: Espionage Science-Fiction
Country: United States
Story Duration: 02:24:00
Act Duration:
1st Act: 00:33:19
2nd Act: 00:34:44
3rd Act: 00:42:30
4th Act: 00:33:24
Plot Turns:
1st: Katherine Barton’s revelation
2nd: Andrei Sator agrees to heist plan
3rd: Andrei Sator’s plans revealed
ASD Ratio: 65%
AAD Ratios:
1st Act: 51%
2nd Act: 57%
3rd Act: 69%
4th Act: 81%
Action Structure: 1243
Action Scenarios:
Capture
Escape
Fall
Fight
Heist
Pursuit
Rescue
Speed
Transfer
Total Action Moments: 42
Notable Action Sequence: Tallinn Heist
Duration: 00:14:25
Act: 3rd
Action Scenarios:
Capture
Escape
Fight
Pursuit
Rescue
Speed
Transfer
Description: Tenet (2020) is without a doubt among the most innovative espionage-sci-fi films ever produced. While time travel in sci-fi films is not new, the film features technology that can reverse entropy permitting objects and characters to travel backwards in time. This premise departs from the standard ways time travel is depicted in film, namely by presenting scenes where objects and characters traveling forward through time interact with objects and characters traveling in the reverse temporal direction. The film’s action scenarios are given a novel twist as a result of this narrative premise. In the film, fights, battles, and rescues feature forward and reversed temporality fundamentally altering the narrative logic of these action scenarios and extending what can be imaginatively conceived when staging action for the screen.
The Tallinn Heist sequence can illustrate how this collision of temporal directions can be manifested in an extended action sequence. The sequence is structured in two parts. The first involves a complex heist of what the Protagonist believes to be a case carrying plutonium conveyed in a moving security convoy. However, the case turns out to contain a section of a device that, when united together with its other components, reveals an algorithm that can reverse the entropy of the entire world. The second part of the sequence consists of an automotive pursuit in which Andrei Sator, in reverse temporality, tries to obtain the device from the Protagonist.
The heist in the sequence commences when the security convoy passes a parked BMW sedan from which the Protagonist and Neil coordinate the other Tenet agents involved in the theft. The BMW follows the convoy while Tenet agents position three large trucks to surround the three security vehicles. Neil and the Protagonist then accelerate past the convoy, while Volkov, Sator’s right-hand man, follows behind to relay developments to him. Neil then stops at a parked fire truck to allow the Protagonist, disguised as a fireman, to hop onto it. The fire truck is then positioned to the left of the convoy, effectively capturing it within the other large trucks [Figure 1]. The Protagonist uses the fire truck’s ladder to transfer onto the security vehicle containing the device as a means to place a bomb on top of it to gain access inside [Figure 2]. Dropping from the hole created by the bomb, the Protagonist enters inside the vehicle to obtain the item. He transfers back on to fire truck, and then transfers back into Neil’s car.
At this point, the heist goes without a hitch until an inverted SUV ahead can be seen winding its way through traffic. It speeds past the BMW and spins around and begins to pursue Neil’s car but in reverse [Figure 3]. The inverted SUV drives parallel to the BMW with Sator holding a gun to the head of Katherine, his estranged wife, as a means to persuade the Protagonist to relinquish the device. The Protagonist throws the case to Sator but without the device, bouncing it off the hood of another inverted vehicle that viewer learns later on is driven by the Protagonist’s future self [Figure 4]. Sator and his driver then transfer into an uninverted vehicle driven by Volkov, and make their escape. They leave Katherine in the back seat of the SUV with her hands tied behind her back, unable to free herself as the vehicle speeds towards a traffic jam up ahead. The impending collision sets a deadline to rescue Katherine, motivating the protagonist to affect another transfer by leaping from the BMW into the SUV. Once inside, the Protagonist presses on brake with his hand, stopping the SUV before it collides with the stationary vehicles in the traffic jam and thereby rescuing Katherine from the potential collision.
Sator’s men arrive at the scene and take the Protagonist and Katherine hostage and back to the Freeport that contains the temporal turnstile, the device used to invert temporal direction. Sator shoots Katherine in the stomach as a means to force the Protagonist to divulge the location of the device. However, Commander Ives arrives with his supporting Tenet troops who fire at Sator as he retreats through the temporal turnstile. The sequence ends, appropriately, with Sator’s escape, which consists of an inversion of the direction of time.