By This article contains spoilers for Tenet
One of the many attributes which you would hope they look for in a spy is the ability to make calculated, even cold, decisions in order to pursue their mark at any cost. You would hope that someone tasked with stopping a threat worse than nuclear armageddon wouldn't be so distracted by their enemy's wife that they risk the entire mission for her, especially when it appears from their one kiss on the cheek that they have the sort of awkwardness you usually see when someone is trying to cut short a bad date.
Tenet's nameless protagonist is a machine in pursuit of justice for earth, one apparently willing to take a cyanide pill instead of giving up secrets to the enemy. It seems farfetched then that he would potentially derail the whole mission for a woman he has no chemistry with, even if he feels compelled to save her and her son.
Christopher Nolan's films often come under fire for being cold and shiny rather than feeling human. Elizabeth Debicki's character Kat is one of the most prominent female characters he has written, and yet she still feels like a shell only made real by her love for her son, hatred for her husband and potential feelings for The Protagonist. Trying to suggest a romance between them feels like sticking plaster over the idea that she doesn't have any agency in the story, but the glue doesn't quite hold.
If there's nothing between them then are we to believe that he's just helping out because he can't resist being a good guy? Their will-they-won't-they is perhaps the most unbelievable aspect of Tenet, impressive really given that the film conjures the idea of a war against the future in which the enemy is time inversion and the prospect of the past being destroyed.
In The Protagonist there was a chance to create Bond without the baggage of the franchise and his tedious history of womanising. Tenet succeeds in some ways but feels unable to resist giving him a girl he has to save and unwilling to write one he might be compelled to do so for.
In one moment the film flirts with being feminist as arms dealer Priya tells The Protagonist that her husband is just a cover and she is the brains of the operation. "A masculine front in a man's world is useful" she tells him with a smile. Priya's lack of remorse is refreshing when most blockbusters don't allow women to be evil without the caveat that it's all to save their dying husband, or something similarly soft and forgiving. Yet this moment of sisterhood solidarity is wasted as the story flogs the dead horse of Kat and The Protagonist's forbidden romance as something we would care about.
Tenet's ending sees The Protagonist popping up to save Kat on the school run as Priya is about to tie up the loose ends and take her down. He has given her a phone to say her location into if ever she feels like she's in trouble so he can invert to that point and save her at a moment's notice. She is doomed to always need rescuing and he's lumped with swooping in to save someone he doesn't even really fancy. What sort of future is that?
'Tenet' is out now
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