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Tenet · written by Christopher Nolan · 2020
Scene 201 of 275 · ≈ 2 min on screen · Act two
An unnamed intelligence operative, recruited into a shadow war fought through time-inverted weapons and objects, teams with an enigmatic ally to stop a dying Russian oligarch from using technology gifted by a dying future to erase the present.
The Protagonist in his zone of comfort — a skilled, anonymous field operative, competent and confident inside the Kiev operation.
Broken by torture and 'killed,' he needs a new purpose; Fay offers one that transcends the nation-state loyalties that just got his team killed.
He enters the wholly unfamiliar situation of Tenet — the wind turbine, the password test, and Barbara's proof that time itself can run backward.
Mumbai, London, Oslo, and Amalfi — he adapts to the world of inverted physics and Sator's inner circle, paying costs (Kat's trust, his own safety) to get close to the target.
The Tallinn ambush succeeds — he gets what the mission wanted, extracting the plutonium '241' from the armored convoy.
He pays a heavy price for it — Kat is shot, the material is lost to Sator anyway, and he is left not knowing whether any of it mattered.
Priya's full reveal at the Oslo War Memorial — the algorithm was deliberately split and hidden, and Sator's 'theft' was meant to happen — reframes defeat as the synthesis insight that shapes the endgame.
Kat, healing, learns Sator's fitness tracker is a dead man's switch and that he's dying of cancer, choosing to end the world at his happiest remembered moment in Vietnam.
Ives explains the coming bi-temporal assault on Stalsk-12's hypocentre to retrieve the algorithm before Sator's suicide can trigger it.
Soldiers file through the inversion turnstile aboard the icebreaker for the operation.
This scene
The Protagonist pulls off his respirator.
KAT
Where’s Neil?
PROTAGONIST
He must’ve already gone through...
KAT
I didn’t get to say goodbye – this
is goodbye, isn’t it?
PROTAGONIST
Today’s the 14th. Offshore of
Siberia – time for us to go. You
keep going back another day, give
you time to make it to Viet Nam.
KAT
Who gets me back on the yacht?
PROTAGONIST
I’ve got somebody good lined up.
I’d like to say you don’t have to
do this, but...
KAT
I once told you I didn’t need
redemption. But the chance to save
my child? You can’t know what that
means to a mother.
PROTAGONIST
No.
KAT
The worst thing Andrei ever did to
me was that offer – to let me go if
I never saw my son again. I
shouted, swore –
INSERT CUT: Kat FLINGS a crystal BOWL OF RASPBERRIES, SMASHING it on a wooden deck...
KAT (CONT'D)
But he’d seen it on my face – just
for an instant.
Kat looks at the Protagonist. Who says nothing.
KAT (CONT'D)
I don’t know if I hate him more for
the things he’s done, or because he
knows that about me. You’ve killed
people you hated before?
PROTAGONIST
It’s not usually personal.
KAT
He’s dying, anyway. It might not
even count –
PROTAGONIST
It always counts. You’re not there
to kill him – you’re the backstop.
and he kills himself, he takes us
all with him, instantly.
Kat moves to the Protagonist, in close –
KAT
Just keep up your end, okay?
The Protagonist nods. She kisses him.
PROTAGONIST
When it’s over, and you’re raising
your boy. Carry this –
The Protagonist hands her a DUMB PHONE.
PROTAGONIST (CONT'D)
There may be a time and place you
feel threatened. Hit talk, state
your location, hang up.
KAT
Who gets the message?
PROTAGONIST
Posterity.