Tenet · written by Christopher Nolan · 2020

The Protagonist finds a mirrored two-room chamber with a mysterious revolving-door 'turnstile' and self-healing bullet holes in the glass.

Scene 97 of 275 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act two

Protagonist
Neil

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 44 min into a 2:28 film

The story so farBefore scene 97

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.

Scenes 1–17
The Protagonist in his zone of comfort — a skilled, anonymous field operative, competent and confident inside the Kiev operation.
Scenes 18–20
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.
Scenes 21–32
He enters the wholly unfamiliar situation of Tenet — the wind turbine, the password test, and Barbara's proof that time itself can run backward.
Scene 47
The Protagonist begins surveilling Kat at her son's school gates — he commits to using her marriage against Sator, entering the upside-down world of the operation proper.
Scene 51
Kat's appraisal-room scene with the forged Goya begins the relationship — with Kat, and by extension her son Max — that will carry the story's theme of what a parent will do to save a child.
Just before
Scene 94
They burst into the corridor gasping for air.
Scene 95
A broken lockpick nearly strands them as gas floods through a broken roller door.
Scene 96
Catching their breath, Neil senses someone else is in the vaults with them.
Scene 97
This scene

97INT. ROTAS VAULT – CONTINUOUS

The Protagonist enters a room, one side of which is a LONG GLASS WINDOW. Neil is on the other side of the glass, in an IDENTICAL ROOM. There are BULLET HOLES in the glass. At the end of each room is a tube, like a sealed in REVOLVING DOOR. The Protagonist’s feet crunch BROKEN GLASS...

Neil examines BULLET HOLES in the wall opposite the glass. WISPS of SMOKE gather near the holes – Neil reaches up –

PROTAGONIST

Don’t touch them –

NEIL

What the hell happened here?

The Protagonist sees a STRIPPED AUTOMATIC PISTOL on the floor. He picks it up, thinking –

PROTAGONIST

It hasn’t happened, yet.

Neil looks at the Protagonist, quizzical – A LOUD HUM STARTS UP from the revolving door... the Protagonist looks down – MOVEMENT beneath his feet – the DEBRIS – SMOKE GATHERS – the revolving doors ROTATE, OPENING – a BLACK-CLAD FIGURE in a GAS MASK LEAPS BACKWARDS from the tube – reaching behind itself to GRAB the stripped automatic in the Protagonist’s hand –

On Neil’s side an identical BLACK-CLAD FIGURE LEAPS out FORWARDS – knocks Neil over, moving for the vault door –

A SLIDE jumps into the Backwards Figure’s hand – he REASSEMBLES the gun in the Protagonist’s hand – a MAGAZINE jumping up to LOAD IT – BLAM!

A bullet is SUCKED OUT OF THE WALL – THROUGH THE GLASS – ‘HEALING’ THE BULLET HOLES – the Protagonist STRUGGLES with the Backwards Figure – whose REVERSE MOVEMENTS seem ALIEN and IMPOSSIBLE –

Neil gives chase – RACING out of the vault door –

The Backwards Figure pulls the Protagonist sideways, lining up his head with the next bullet hole – BLAM! GLASS FLIES UP as the shot JUST MISSES the Protagonist’s head –