10 Smart Movies With Incredibly Dumb Twists

For its many faults - namely that infuriatingly muddy sound mix - Christopher Nolan's Tenet is at least an ambitious and thoughtful sci-fi action flick which engages with notions of time in head-spinning manner.

And while Nolan has a knack for delivering sharp final plot twists which change the context of prior scenes in an impressive way, Tenet unfortunately falls a little short in this department.

In the film's final moments, after The Protagonist (John David Washington) and Neil (Robert Pattinson) have successfully prevented Sator (Kenneth Branagh) from effectively ending the world, Neil reveals that he was actually hired by the Protagonist all along.

More to the point, the future version of the Protagonist was the mastermind behind Tenet since the beginning - whatever "the beginning" actually means in this world - inverting himself, setting up the mission to stop Sator, recruiting Neil and giving him everything he needed to help the past version of the Protagonist.

As far as "ingenious" Nolan twists go, though, this was more of an irritating swing and a miss than an eye-opener, with Nolan ultimately trying to get a little too cute and clever for his own good.

Perhaps it'll seem less insufferable when the movie can be watched with subtitles once it hits home video, but for now Tenet feels like a film swallowing its own tail in the worst possible way.

Remember - complexity and cleverness are two different things.