Okay so I saw it today and here’s my review. WITH SOME SPOILERS PERHAPS.
I enjoyed it a lot. This is really well made movie, as you may expect from Nolan. Stylistically it shares a lot with Dunkirk, albeit with very different subject matter. The soundtrack is very intrusive (I was watching in a Dolby ATMOS screen to emphasise that), a strange electronica score that drive you through any increase in pace and jeopardy as in Dunkirk. It drops you right into it with a great set piece scene at a theatre.
The characters are all presented face value, with the exception of Elizabeth Debicki’s we know nothing about the background of any of them from start to finish. I sense this is deliberate as who can trust who is a core part of the narrative. The performances are still very strong and to me Pattinson the pick of them.
To the story – what struck me is overall this felt more Le Carre than sci-fi. Yes the time bits are all in there, moreso at the end, but especially with Debicki playing a mob boss’ wife it frequently reminded me most of The Night Manager TV series recently. It’s a lot more spy movie than the trailer suggests. For the timey wimey science stuff, I have to admit I found it a little confusing how ‘inversion’ works so I took the path of not thinking about it too much and going with the flow and overall that paid off, there are some very clever bits where they revisit scenes from earlier and also play simultaneously forwards and backwards. On the negative side it lost me a little in the final scene, the setup was delivered with a full military briefing of what they were doing with one troop moving forwards and the other backwards but I still felt I rather missed out on what ‘Neil’ was doing which blunted its effectiveness.
Overall I give it neither of the Guardian’s scores but a solid 4 because of the rather muddled ending which admittedly may be partly down to my limited brainpower.
US is still being stupid about the virus and theatres are still closed
