I'm at a 7 out of 10 with Tenet. For me, it felt like a tremendous exercise — a string of conceptually fascinating and beautifully rendered action scenes with little to offer in terms of compelling conflict. I think of Neil and the Protagonist bungee-jumping into Priya's home. It's stunning, but all to... deliver some exposition. For me, most of the movie had this thrillingly boring pattern. There are some top-tier Nolan sequences in Tenet, from the opening at the opera to the red room/blue room. But as a movie, as a continuous 2.5-hour experience, I found it to be empty.
A few random thoughts. Despite the spare characterizations, I like the direction Nolan is going with performances. The dialog reaches almost clinical levels, but unlike Inception, the actors don't feel like dialog machines. Instead, they're full-bodied but without anywhere to place it. Loved the score and cinematography. And finally: masks. They've become a dominant thread through Nolan's filmography, particularly over the past decade: The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar, Dunkirk, and Tenet. The masks force our attention to a limited portion of an actor's face, highlighting certain glances or reactions, or smaller moments of emotion. But more and more I find the usage is distracting.
