Review: Christopher Nolan's 'Tenet' is an exciting thriller, but don't fall into the trap of trying to make sense of it

What would a Christopher Nolan movie be if there wasn’t someone onscreen to explain his labyrinthine plots? Audiences — at least the ones willing to brave going into a theater in our virus-plagued times — get their answer with “Tenet,” a maze-like action thriller that’s exciting in the moment, even if it’s gratuitously complicated.

We get our first dollop of extraneous plot exposition when a CIA Black Ops agent — played by John David Washington and referred to in the credits only as “Protagonist” — wakes up on a boat, after he thought he had taken a cyanide pill when captured. No, that was a test, says a shadowy fixer (Martin Donovan), who gives him an assignment to stop a plot to destroy the world. His only tip is a single word, “tenet,” which “will open the right doors, and some of the wrong ones, too.”

Read the full review at sltrib.com.