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Tenet · written by Christopher Nolan · 2020
Scene 248 of 275 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act three
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.
Recovered and re-briefed by Priya, he returns to a now-familiar situation — the Tenet operation — but changed, moving to Stalsk-12 with the full picture of what's at stake.
Sator taunts the Protagonist over the phone about his fanaticism and his inevitable role in ending the world.
The Protagonist argues with Sator over whether the future's descendants have any right to destroy the present.
Sator reflects on the future's dying world as the true cause of the coming apocalypse.
This scene
Neil, FORWARDS NOW, spots a GREY TRUCK outside the turnstile building – he jumps in, FIRING IT UP –
RACING THROUGH THE STREETS, PAST THE IMPLODING/ EXPLODING BUILDING, racing for the tunnel mouth, trying to head off the Protagonist and Ives –
NEIL
Wait! Wait!
They dive into the tunnel, which COLLAPSES. Neil sets his sights on the hypocentre ridge above, GUNS the engine...