28 YEARS LATER : Tuesday 24th June 2025

I saw the MA15+ Rated '28 YEARS LATER' at my local independent movie theatre this week, and this post-apocalyptic horror film is Co-Produced and Directed by Danny Boyle, and Written and Co-Produced by Alex Garland. It is the third in the '28 Days Later' film series, following 2002's '28 Days Later' and 2007's '28 Weeks Later', and is reportedly the first instalment in a new trilogy of films, of which the second film was shot back-to-back and titled '28 Years Later : The Bone Temple' which was Directed by Nia DaCosta, Written by Garland, and Produced by Boyle and Garland, and is due for release in mid-January 2026. The first two films in the franchise grossed a total Box Office haul of US$172M from combined production budgets of US$23M. The film went on release here in Australia, in the US and the UK last week, has so far grossed US$69M from a production budget of US$60M and has generated largely favourable critical reviews.

The films open in 2002, during the initial outbreak of the Rage Virus, where a group of young children are sat around a small TV screen watching an episode of the 'Teletubbies' in a remote house somewhere in the Scottish Highlands. A young lad named Jimmy (Rocco Haynes) flees from the house after being attacked by his infected family, in which all the other children are killed. He runs for shelter to the nearby church, where he finds his father (Sandy Batchelor), the local vicar, praying. Believing the outbreak to be the Day of Judgment, the vicar interprets the virus as an indicator of the end of times. He gives Jimmy a crucifix necklace and urges him to flee before allowing himself to be overwhelmed by a horde of the infected, so giving Jimmy the opportunity to hide and ultimately escape.

We then fast forward 28 years and although the Rage Virus has been eradicated from mainland Europe, the British Isles remains in indefinite quarantine, patrolled by offshore ships from across the continent. A survivor community lives on the tidal island of Lindisfarne, off the northeast coast of England, connected by a fortified causeway that is only passable at low tide. Among them are Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a scavenger; his wife Isla (Jodie Comer), who has an unknown illness that keeps her virtually bedridden; and their twelve-year-old son Spike (Alfie Williams). Jamie takes Spike to the mainland for a coming-of-age ritual. Village leadership reminds Spike of the dangers of leaving the island and while he is free to go beyond and return at will, search and rescue missions will not be launched for those who do not return.

On the mainland, after Spike has made his first kill of an infected, they make their way to an abandoned and dilapidated cottage where they find an infected, hanging upside down from the rafters by his feet and with a plastic bag over his head and with the name 'Jimmy' carved into his torso. A short time later they  encounter a pack of infected led by an Alpha, a mutated variant of the infected who are stronger and more intelligent. Returning to the cottage chased by the infected, Jamie is able to kill most of them with his bow and arrows as they escape into the attic. 

As the evening closes in they observe boats patrolling the sea and a fire burning up the coast in the distance. A stampeding deer herd triggers the partial collapse of the cottage, and Jamie and Spike are able to get out just in time. They return to Lindisfarne as the tide rises above the causeway to knee height, pursued by the Alpha who almost catches up to the pair, until sentries located in a look out tower use a large homemade crossbow loaded with a burning arrow to kill it. 

During a raucous celebration in which Jamie calls his son a Giant Killer and over exaggerates the number of infected Spike slayed, the boy witnesses his father kissing Rosey (Amy Cameron) and runs off in shock. He returns home to his grandfather who is looking after Spike's mother and learns that the fire was more than likely lit by Dr. Ian Kelson, a reclusive survivor on the mainland whom the villagers fear. According to rumours, dating back fifteen years, Kelson had been seen burning bodies in what seemed to be a ritualistic fashion. Disillusioned with his father, Spike secretly returns to the mainland with his mother, hoping to locate Kelson so that he can provide the necessary treatment for her. While resting for the night in a church, Isla kills an infected who had crept up on Spike, in her disconnected condition not recalling the next morning how it happened.

Swedish NATO soldier Erik Sundqvist (Edvin Ryding) and his unit are forced ashore after their patrol boat sinks off the coast of Scotland. Erik is the only survivor after an Alpha and a pack of infected attacked his unit. He comes across Spike and Isla in a run down Happy Eater roadside restaurant, rescuing them from another pack as the restaurant explodes in a ball of flame as a result of leaking benzene inside that had built up over many years. Erik joins their search for Kelson. The group comes across a derailed passenger train and Isla finds a pregnant infected woman inside one of the carriages temporarily exhibiting semi-docile behaviour, whom she helps give birth to an uninfected infant girl. 

Believing the baby is infected, Erik kills the mother in a hail of bullets and prepares to kill the child, but another dominant Alpha hearing the commotion intervenes and rips his head off. The Alpha chases Spike and Isla through the carriages and out across the surrounding fields, until Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) appears and subdues it with a morphine-laced blowdart. 

Taking the head of Erik, Kelson leads Spike, Isla, and the infant to his sanctuary, which is a temple built from sterilised bones of the countless number of bodies that have perished over the years from the virus, which he describes as his 'memento mori', which he explains to Spike means 'remember to die'. He later hands the skull of Erik to Spike to place on his temple.

After examining Isla, and using the limited resources he has available Kelson deduces that she has terminal cancer that has metastasized. Spike pleads with Kelson to cure her, but he explains that he is unable to do anything for his mother. At her request, he incapacitates Spike and euthanises her with a morphine dart. He later brings her sterilised skull to Spike, who climbs to the top of the temple and places it there as a memorial as the sun comes up. After another confrontation with the Alpha, Spike and Kelson escape, and Kelson encourages Spike to go home. Spike returns to Lindisfarne alone, leaving Isla (the uninfected baby whom he named after his mother) at the gate to the village with a note for Jamie explaining her origins and saying he will return when ready. Jamie, realising Spike is alone now on the mainland, tries to chase after him, but is prevented from doing so by the rising tide covering the causeway.

28 days later, Spike is seen on the mainland by the side of the road cooking a fish on an open camp fire when not far away he sees an infected, and waits until the infected is nearly upon him before killing it with his bow and arrow. When another appears Spike starts to run but when he rounds a corner his way his blocked by a steep rock fall. While trying to evade the infected, Spike is rescued by a gang of 'Jimmies' styled after Jimmy Savile, led by an adult Jimmy (Jack O'Connell) all dressed in garish track suits, with long blond hair and gold chains around their necks and gold rings on their fingers. After the Jimmies have dispensed with all the infected, Jimmy, with the inverted crucifix his father gave him around his neck, offers his hand to Spike in a sign of friendship and respect. 

With '28 Years Later' Director Danny Boyle and scribe Alex Garland have expanded on the world first seen in their two earlier films in the series, and delivered us with a zombie flick that morphs into a coming of age story with raw unbridled emotion at its heart, delivered by top notch performances from Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes and newcomer Alfie Williams. When the violence comes its pretty graphic, as is to be expected from a world inhabited by the infected, but don't rely on jump scares or the intensity of its predecessors if that's what you're looking for. This character driven story is entertaining enough but its not great, and with that said, it's hard to judge this film because we're only seeing part of the story with two further instalments still to come. And as for the last five minutes - where did the inspiration for the 'Jimmies' come from I wonder? We'll just have to wait for 'The Bone Temple' I guess to find out.

'28 Years Later' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

KRAVEN THE HUNTER : Tuesday 17th December 2024

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'KRAVEN THE HUNTER' earlier this week, and this American Superhero film features the Marvel Comics characters of the same name and is the sixth film in Sony's Spider-Man Universe. It is Directed by J.C. Chandor who made his feature film making debut with 'Margin Call' in 2011 and would follow this up with 'All Is Lost' in 2013, 'A Most Violent Year' in 2014, and 'Triple Frontier' in 2019. The film was released here in Australia and the US last week, cost a reported circa US$120M to produce, has so far grossed US$29M worldwide and has garnered generally negative critical reviews. Apparently, earlier this month and following the projected financial failure of the film, it was reported that 'Kraven the Hunter' would be the final film in Sony's Spider-Man Universe, ending any chance for a sequel or crossover film, although one well known publication stated that this will not be the last film in the franchise . . . . . so who do you believe?

The film opens up with a convoy of prison vehicles driving along a snow covered landscape deep inside Siberia. The convoy comes to halt at a fuel stop so that the prisoners can relieve themselves before continuing their onward journey. One of the prisoners is Sergei Kravinoff aka Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who is assigned a cell with a mean looking MoFo of a man. Kravinoff tells his fellow inmate to give him just three days before he escapes. The next day Kraven is brought to the attention of Seymon Chorney (Yuri Kolokolnikov) a Russian crime lord and fellow inmate, after he successfully overpowers two of Chorney's henchmen in the exercise yard. Chorney asks Kraven who he is, to which comes the reply that he is the Hunter, with Chorney responding that it's just a myth. Within a minute Chorney and his two henchmen are dead, stabbed with the tooth of a lion which Kraven plucked from a lion skin rug on the floor. Kraven then makes his escape through the prison effortlessly clambering up walls, running along roof tops, jumping barbed wire fences, and evading a hail of bullets from the prison guards. Once outside he runs into a snow storm in which is waiting an aircraft to transport him back home. 

We then back track sixteen years, and following the death of his mother, Sergei Kravinoff (Levi Miller), along with his half-brother Dmitri Smerdyakov (Billy Barratt), are taken out of school by their father Nikolai (Russell Crowe) to prepare to take over his drug trafficking operations. During a hunting trip in Tanzania, Sergei is mortally wounded protecting his brother from a legendary apex lion. Almost dead from the savage mauling, he is found by a girl named Calypso (Diaana Babnicova), who, having been forewarned by her grandmother that she would intervene in an accident very soon and give its victim great power, heals him with a serum gifted by her grandmother, and calls for rescue, leaving a tarot card in the hands of an unconscious Sergei. A few days later Sergei comes around in a hospital bed having been officially pronounced dead for three minutes, but now appears to be fighting fit. Nikolai discharges his son from hospital and the three return to their grand home on the outskirts of London. Nikolai reveals he killed the lion to teach his sons a lesson about showing no fear, and in his world it is very much survival of the fittest. Sergei, meanwhile having discovered his physical attributes have become animal like, becomes sickened by his father's actions and his intentions for his sons, and retreats to a sanctuary his mother owned in the remote wilderness of eastern Russia, leaving Dmitri behind to fend for himself.

Fast forwarding to the present day and Kraven travels to London for Dmitri's (Fred Hechinger) birthday, which he does every year. Unable to sleep that night on the sofa of Dmitri's lavish apartment, he goes for a walk falling asleep in the park outside Dmitri's building. He wakens the next day and goes back up to the apartment to find Dmitri gone and blood stains on his pillow and bed sheets. Dmitri had been captured by mercenaries, and when Nikolai refuses to pay the US$20M ransom, Kraven tracks down Calypso (Ariana DeBose), now working as an investigative lawyer in London, and convinces her to help track down his brother's kidnappers. 

Meanwhile, Dmitri is met by his kidnappers' boss Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola) who took part in an experiment spearheaded by a cutting edge New York doctor, granting him the strength and outward appearance of a rhinoceros which he is able to control by way of a back pack containing a serum which continually drip feeds via a tube into his lower side. When he unplugs the tube, he turns into Rhino but says the process is extremely painful. Aleksei proposes an alliance to overthrow Nikolai, but upon discovering Kraven's connection to Dmitri, Aleksei lures him to an abandoned monastery in Turkey, with the intention of taking out Kraven there, but he survives the ambush. 

Aleksei is then approached by the Foreigner (Christopher Abbott), an assassin who uses ocular hypnosis to disorientate his targets, with an offer to kill Kraven, having carefully studied his modus operandi for years. Tracking Kraven and Calypso to his sanctuary in eastern Russia and using Dmitri as bait, Aleksei and the Foreigner ambush Kraven. Drugging him with neurotoxin, the Foreigner attacks Kraven and is successful in overpowering and paralysing him but just as he is standing over Kraven and about to pull the trigger of the gun pointed at his head Calypso kills him with an arrow straight in to his eye, and revives Kraven with a vile of the serum. Kraven then uses a buffalo stampede to trap Aleksei, who, despite turning into the Rhino and briefly overpowering him, is killed. 

Having determined that Nikolai was the one who revealed his existence to Aleksei, Kraven tracks his father down to a snow covered Siberian forest for answers. There in the dead of night Nikolai states that he knew Aleksei was targeting him and manipulated his sons to remove him. Kraven refuses to kill his father and turns his back on him and as he walks away he drops the ammunition he unloaded from his fathers shotgun on the ground just as Nikolai is attacked and killed by a bear. 

One year later on the occasion of Dmitri's birthday, Kraven again visits his brother in London. Dmitri in the meantime has gained shapeshifting abilities from the doctor who experimented on Aleksei, and after discovering this new found ability disowns Kraven, stating that despite his claims of being morally superior, he and Nikolai were the same - big game hunters searching for their next big trophy. Dmitri demonstrates this to Kraven by changing his appearance before becoming chameleon like and then changing back to his natural appearance. 

At his family home, Kraven comes across a note left for him by Nikolai along with a vest made from the skin and the mane of the killed lion that mauled Sergei when he was young, which he puts on, and takes a seat in front of a mirror.

'Kraven the Hunter' is not a bad film, but it's also not that good either. The plot is fairly thin on the ground, the action set pieces are well enough choreographed, but the CGI is left wanting and sub-par for a film costing well north of US$100M, and, nothing that we haven't already seen before. The dialogue is also pretty lame, and the only saving grace is in the performances of Taylor-Johnson, Crowe, Nivola and DeBose, with the latter being given too little screen time and too little to contribute. J.C. Chandor whose previous film output has been far far better, has crafted a film that seems to have had too much studio and Producer interference, resulting in a film that is sure to disappear into the annals of mediocrity and leaving Sony's Spider-Man Universe to bow out on a whimper.

'Kraven the Hunter' merits two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.

BULLET TRAIN : Tuesday 9th August 2022.

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'BULLET TRAIN' earlier this week and this American action comedy film is Co-Produced and Directed by David Leitch whose previous film making credits include his uncredited debut on 2014's 'John Wick' with Chad Stahelski, then 'Atomic Blonde' in 2017, 'Deadpool 2' in 2018 and 'Fast and Furious Presents : Hobbs & Shaw' in 2019. The film is based on the Japanese novel 'Maria Beetle' by Kotaro Isaka, and was released in the US last week too, having been originally slated for release on 8th April before being delayed to 15th July then again to 29th July and then finally settling on 5th August. It had its World Premiere in Paris, France on 18th July. The film has grossed so far US$72M from its production budget of about US$88M and has garnered mixed or average reviews.

The film opens with a distraught father, Yuichi Kimura (Andrew Koji) looking over his young son laying in a hospital bed in a coma having been thrown off a supermarket roof. His father, The Elder (Hiroyuki Sanada) enters the room and asks his son what was he doing while his son was on the supermarket roof? A father is supposed to look out for their children! Kimura swears vengeance on the person who threw his son off the roof. We then cut to former professional assassin codenamed Ladybug (Brad Pitt), who has recently attended therapy, returns to work with a new positive spin on life. He is tasked by his handler, Maria Beetle (Sandra Bullock), to complete what appears to be a simple task - to collect a briefcase aboard a bullet train travelling from Tokyo to Kyoto after her usual contact, Carver, is forced to cancel due to illness. Ladybug is at first reluctant, as his notorious years long run of bad luck continues to haunt him every job he gets, resulting in numerous accidental deaths. 

Unknown to Ladybug, three other assassins are onboard - hitmen brothers Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry) and The Prince (Joey King) a mercenary posing as an English schoolgirl. The former two have been tasked by the ruthless Russian, The White Death, head of the world’s largest crime syndicate, who has taken control of the Japanese criminal underworld by force wiping out everyone who gets in his way. The brothers find their employment to be somewhat suspicious given The White Death specifically contracted them for their participation for a job in Bolivia in which the pair singlehandedly took out sixteen goons and an innocent bystander. 

Having retrieved The White Death’s kidnapped son and the briefcase containing his US$10M in ransom monies, the brothers are delivering both to Kyoto. Meanwhile in the First Class cabins, The Prince summons fellow assassin, Yuichi Kimura, to the train, having pushed his young son off the roof of the supermarket. She has already planted an associate at the hospital ready to finish the boy off, should Kimura fail in any way to cooperate with her plan, which involves rigging the briefcase and Kimura’s gun with explosives to kill White Death, who is known for executing his adversaries by turning their own weapons on them. Successfully stealing the briefcase, Ladybug is ambushed by another assassin, code-named The Wolf (Benito A. Martinez Ocasio), who had arrived seeking revenge for the deaths of his wife and his entire cartel, poisoned at their Mexican wedding. After a brief fight, The Wolf is accidentally killed when his knife thrown at Ladybug ricochet's off the briefcase and straight back into his own heart, and then just to add insult to that injury when he collapses backwards he breaks his neck on the briefcase sitting upright at Ladybug's feet. 

After the brothers find the briefcase to be missing, they also then find White Death’s son dead by apparent poisoning. The Prince convinces Tangerine in believing that Ladybug is responsible, while Ladybug attempts to negotiate with Lemon but is forced to render him unconscious. Ladybug runs into the Wolf’s intended target, The Hornet (Zazie Beetz), the poisoner who massacred his wedding, revealed be the one who killed White Death’s son some 42 minutes earlier. She stabs Ladybug with a syringe of boomslang (a large highly venomous snake) venom in the back of the hand but fails to push down the plunger of the syringe, so he removes the syringe and injects her in the arm, ensuring the venom is all injected. Within thirty second The Hornet is dead having bled out from her eyes, nose and mouth, but not before the Hornet injects him with her only dose of anti-venom. 

Tangerine located Ladybug and the pair get into a fight both inside and outside the train, but eventually reach a stalemate with Ladybug helping Tangerine convince White Death’s men that his son and the briefcase are safe. However, their cunning plan is foiled when Ladybugs run of bad luck exposes their ruse. He then kicks Tangerine off the train. Meanwhile, suspicious of Kimura and the Prince, Lemon shoots Kimura in the stomach but falls victim to an innocent looking bottle of water that was drugged by Ladybug earlier with an extra large dose of sleeping powder. He is shot several times in the chest at close range by the Prince. After literally punching his way back onto the train through the front windscreen, Tangerine finds his brother’s body and confronts the Prince, who had a sticker of Diesel, a locomotive from Thomas & Friends, stuck onto her back. Lemon learned everything he knew about people from watching every episode of Thomas the Tank Engine as a child and so believes that Diesel cannot be trusted. The Prince though manipulates Ladybug into fighting Tangerine, resulting in him being fatally shot in the neck and bleeding out before he could warn Ladybug of The Prince. Kimura’s father, The Elder, boards the train and reveals himself as a former Yakuza lieutenant whose wife and associates were killed in White Death’s rise to power.

The Elder in the meantime has ensured that his grandson in hospital is safe by having The Prince's associate minding him killed. He and Ladybug find Kimura and Lemon still alive, with the former nursing a shot to the gut and the latter having worn a bulletproof vest, as he always does. They then all prepare themselves for the ambush awaiting them at their Kyoto destination. 

The train arrives in Kyoto, and Ladybug is met by White Death (Michael Shannon) and his henchmen. The Prince, revealed to be White Death’s very angry daughter, tries to goad him into shooting her with Kimura’s booby-trapped gun, but he instead tells her she was never part of his plan. The White Death goes on to explain that he hired all the assassins aboard the train as revenge for the murder of his wife.

Following the massacre of sixteen of his men by Tangerine and Lemon during 'The Bolivia Job', his wife was called to bail their son out of jail and was killed by Carver (Ryan Reynolds in a blink and you'll miss it cameo), who was meant to take out her husband. The only surgeon that could have saved his wife was poisoned by the Hornet, thereby almost guaranteeing her death. Blaming the brothers, Carver, the Hornet and his own son, White Death had arranged for all the assassins including the Wolf, and Ladybug, who unwittingly replaced Carver on the bullet train to kill each other and his son. However, before White Death can kill Ladybug, the briefcase bomb is triggered by a pair of hapless henchmen, knocking them both back onto the train, which Lemon starts up again at full speed ahead.

As the train hurtles along the tracks out of control, the Elder battles it out with White Death while Kimura and Ladybug fight off his numerous henchmen. Lemon tackles a goon off the train as it traverses a bridge and the both fall into the river below. The train ultimately runs out of tracks and derails, crashing through a forest and then into a nearby town destroying everything, and it, in its path. Ladybug is held at gunpoint by White Death who has The Elders Samurai sword buried deep in his shoulder. He attempts to shoot Ladybug, but is killed himself when Kimura’s gun explodes, ripping off half his face. Ladybug, Kimura, and his father, as they hobble through the wreckage and after The Elder has retrieved his sword from the White Death's shoulder, are confronted by the murderous Prince, who gloats that her luck is what resulted in the White Death’s undoing. As she proclaims herself to be the new White Death, poised with an assault rifle pointed squarely at the three of them, the Prince is mowed down by Lemon driving a truck carrying tangerines. Maria arrives to rescue Ladybug, who has consequently immersed himself in a more optimistic outlook on life and fate.

'Bullet Train' is an entertaining piece of action comedy with the emphasis on the action and less so on the comedy although I did find myself chuckling several times as both the verbal and the sight gags landed. The action comes thick and fast in kinetically choreographed fight sequences, and the melee of characters means you really need to concentrate on who's who in the zoo, but they are all in some way a necessary addition to the at times convoluted and over exaggerated plot. Messrs Pitt, Taylor-Johnson and Tyree Henry carry this film along on their coats tails with a deft touch at the action comedy genre that is as much a nod to Quentin Tarantino as it is to Guy Ritchie, with whom Brad Pitt has worked with both Directors in the past. And in David Leitch, he has once again proven his Directing chops with a fast paced, adrenalin fuelled colourful action fest full of memorable characters, an ensemble cast and a number of great cameo's along the way (including Ryan Reynolds and David Leitch himself), who all look as though they were having a blast shooting this movie. 

'Bullet Train' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

TENET : Tuesday 1st September 2020.

'TENET' which I saw this week is an M Rated much hyped eagerly awaited spy drama film Directed, Written and Co-Produced by Christopher Nolan, who I'm sure needs no further introduction, other than his film Directing credits have amassed global Box Office returns of about US$4.7B and he has won 137 awards and been nominated 228 other times, so I guess he must be doing something right! Originally slated for a 17th July release, this was subsequently pushed back because of COVID-19 to 31st July, then 12th August and saw its release in seventy countries from last week, before its release in the US and China this week. Costing somewhere in the region of US$220M to make, the film has garnered mostly favourable Reviews from Critics, and has so far recouped US$54M. Riffing off James Bond with exotic locations, extravagant action set pieces, international espionage, a Russian bad guy hell bent on bringing about the end of the world as we know it, and the good guys working for a covert secret outfit this is sure to please . . . if you can get your head around the premise.

The film opens up with all guns blazing setting the scene for the action set pieces to follow. A CIA Agent takes part in an undercover SWAT mission at the Kyiv National Opera in the Ukraine, where he rescues an exposed spy and recovers a strange artefact, but not before members of the performing orchestra are shot and killed and the entire audience is put to sleep with gas. Another masked soldier with a red tag on his back pack rescues the Agent from being shot, but at this point it remains unclear as to their identities. The Agent (John David Washington) comes around tied to a chair on a railway line with a colleague also bound, with a bunch of nasty looking henchmen counting down the time until a train comes hurtling down the tracks to kill them both.

The Agent swallows a cyanide capsule, bur he later wakes to be told that the capsule was fake, his colleagues are all dead, and congratulations, he passed the test - no others before him have got that far. The Agent's superior, Victor (Martin Donovan) tells him that one word 'Tenet' will open doors for him, but to be wary because other doors will be slammed in his face with potentially life threatening consequences, and he is to use several markers to begin his journey.

His journey eventually leads him to Laura (Clemence Poesy), a scientist studying bullets and other retrieved artefacts whose make up has been 'inverted' so that they move backwards through time, demonstrated when the Agent catches the bullet in the chamber of the gun, rather than discharging it. Studying the make up of the bullets, the Agent traces the bullets to Priya (Dimple Kapadia), an arms trafficker living in Mumbai, and also affiliated to Tenet.

Now simply going by the handle of the Protagonist, The Agent is supported by a local named Neil (Robert Pattinson) and they both successfully infiltrate Priya's heavily guarded high rise home, by reverse bungee jumping up the tower, and learn that the bullets are supplied by Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh) a Russian Oligarch who is able to communicate with the future. The Protagonist meets with Sator's estranged wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), an art auctioneer. He learns that Sator is blackmailing her over a forged Goya painting that she sold him for US$10M, but he discovered her ruse and threatened to hand her over to the authorities if she doesn't comply with his wishes, and at the same time keeping her at arms length from her beloved young son. Kat comments that the last time the couple were truly happy together was on board his super yacht in Vietnam, from which she saw a mystery woman dive when she was leaving on a motor tender with her son.

The Protagonist and Neil work with fixer Mahir (Himesh Patel) to steal the fake Goya painting from the Freeport storage facility (a tax free haven used by investors to secretly store their art works that is heavily fortified, securely guarded and tightly controlled) at Oslo Airport, by crashing a cargo jet into the adjoining hangar as a diversion. By doing so Sator would no longer have a hold over Kat, and she would effectively be free. Inside the facility, they locate a machine from which two masked men emerge, one of which is inverted. After unmasking the normal one, Neil stops the Protagonist from killing the inverted one. Priya later explains that the machine was a 'Turnstile', a time inversion device developed in the future, and that the two masked men were in fact the same person.

The Protagonist subsequently tells Kat that the painting was destroyed in the resultant fire at the Freeport, and she arranges a meeting with Sator who reveals that he had the painting moved before the crash. Sator by now is on to the Protagonist and has him captured, and threatens to kill him. However, the Protagonist mentions the events at the Ukranian Opera, at which Sator has a change of heart - for now. Kat attempts to drown Sator during a boat race but the Protagonist jumps in and saves him. Sator now feels indebted to the Protagonist and so the Protagonist offers to steal a case of plutonium that Sator desires in exchange for Kat's freedom.

The Protagonist and Neil steal the plutonium in an intricately planned and executed highway heist from an armoured convoy in Estonia, but realise upon opening the carry case that it is in fact another artefact. An inverted Sator captures both the Protagonist and Kat, and shoots her with an inverted bullet, forcing him to reveal where the artefact is. A team of Tenet operatives led by Ives (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) frees the Protagonist forcing Sator to flee. To save Kat's life (for being shot by an inverted bullet is far more deadly that being shot by a conventional bullet), the Protagonist and Neil take her through Sator's Turnstile. They travel back to the Oslo Freeport crash the previous week to un-invert themselves inside the Turnstile there. As they re-infiltrate the airport, the inverted Protagonist fights his non-inverted self, before reaching the Turnstile and un-inverting himself.

Travelling back to Mumbai, Priya explains the artefacts (of which there are nine in total) are parts of a future-developed 'Algorithm' capable of catastrophically inverting the entire world, and that future humans are using Sator to activate it in order to prevent the effects of global warming. Kat advises that Sator is dying from inoperable pancreatic cancer. They conclude that he aims to trigger the Algorithm through suicide and through a dead man's switch, believing the world should die when he does. Kat has suspicions that Sator will choose to die on that day on his yacht in Vietnam when they were last at their happiest together.

Kat inverts back in time to delay Sator's death, while Tenet tracks the assembled Algorithm to an abandoned Soviet closed city and commences a 'temporal pincer movement', meaning that half of their troops move forward in time to the blast zone (the red team led by the Protagonist and Ives), while the other half moves backwards (the blue team led by Neil and Wheeler (Fiona Dourif)). The Protagonist and Ives are prevented from reaching the Algorithm stored underground by a locked gate, until an inverted masked corpse with a red tag on its rucksack springs to life, saving the Protagonist from a gunshot and unlocking the gate. The pair fight with a henchmen, who is intent on sending the assembled component parts of the Algorithm into a chasm below and detonating it, but is prevented from doing so with a bullet to the head. Neil driving an armed vehicle above ground drops a line down into the hole in the ground directly above where the pair are located. Clinging on the assembled Algorithm device they are winched up by Neil, just as the ground below them explodes. 

Meanwhile Kat has lured Sator into a false sense of well being and security on board his yacht in Vietnam. She shoots Sator in the chest and then drops him off the side of the yacht from an upper deck as he tumbles end over end crashing against the side of the boat before landing face down in the sea. Kat then dives from the yacht's deck, where she is witnessed by her past self. Kat calls the Protagonist to let him know that she shot and killed her husband prematurely, hoping that they rescued the Algorithm in time, to which he responds with a yes. The Protagonist, Neil and Ives break up the Algorithm's component into three equal sections each vowing to store them away secretly and without the knowledge of anyone else. The Protagonist notices a familiar red tag on Neil's rucksack, and asks him how he came to be recruited by Tenet. Neil reveals that a future version of the Protagonist recruited him to Tenet years earlier, and this mission is the end of a long friendship that the Protagonist has yet to experience. Neil and Ives depart in a helicopter, leaving the Protagonist on the ground.

Sometime later, and in London, Priya attempts to kill Kat while she is picking her son up from school, but is killed by the Protagonist in the passenger seat of the car where she sat.

I liked 'Tenet' a lot, and this is one film that you need to watch on the big cinema screen where you can immerse yourself in the never before seen stunning visuals, the action set pieces, the surround sound while trying to get your head around the meaning of the inversion of time, that is the core of this films premise. Here Christopher Nolan, who allegedly spent the past two decades or so mulling over the story and his Screenplay, has crafted perhaps his most ambitiously bold and audacious film yet; the lead characters all do a fine job with particular nods to John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki and Kenneth Branagh in perhaps his most evil and villainous role yet. The physics of inversion aren't fully explained and as Clemence Poesy's character Laura explains 'don't try to understand it, feel it', you'll leave the cinema having been wowed by the sheer size and spectacle this film offers up, but scratching your head trying to grapple with the science behind it. This epic film is supposedly going to re-establish the movie going experience in a Post-COVID world, and in this respect Nolan has delivered a wildly entertaining thrill ride of a movie that deserves all the success it can muster, and repeat viewings to understand it.

'TENET' meets four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-