Tenet (2020)

John David Washington: Protagonist

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Quotes 

• Neil : What the hell happened here?

  The Protagonist : Hasn't happened yet.

• The Protagonist : You wanna crash a plane?

  Neil : Well, not from the air. Don't be so dramatic.

  The Protagonist : ...well, how big a plane?

  Neil : That part is a little dramatic.

• Andrei Sator : How would you like to die?

  The Protagonist : Old.

  Andrei Sator : You chose the wrong profession.

• The Protagonist : Hey you never did tell me who recruited you, Neil.

  Neil : Haven't you guessed by now? You did! Only not when you thought. You have a future in the past. Years ago for me, years from now for you.

  The Protagonist : You've known me for years?

  Neil : For me, I think this is the end of a beautiful friendship.

  The Protagonist : But for me it's just the beginning.

  Neil : We get up to some stuff. You gonna love it. You'll see. This whole operation is a temporal pincer.

  The Protagonist : Whose?

  Neil : Yours! You're only half way there. I'll see you in the beginning, friend.

• The Protagonist : I realized we're both working for me.

• Michael Crosby : Look, no offense, but in this world, where someone is claiming to be a billionaire, Brooks Brothers won't cut it.

  The Protagonist : I'm assuming I'm on a budget.

  Michael Crosby : Save the world, then we'll balance the books. Can I recommend a tailor?

  The Protagonist : I'll manage. You British don't have a monopoly on snobbery, you know.

  Michael Crosby : Well, not a monopoly. More of a controlling interest.

• The Protagonist : Neil, wait.

  Neil : We just saved the world, can't leave anything to chance.

  The Protagonist : But can we change things if we do it differently?

  Neil : What's happened, happened. Which is an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world. It's not an excuse to do nothing.

  The Protagonist : Fate?

  Neil : Call it what you want.

  The Protagonist : What do you call it?

  Neil : Reality. Now let me go.

• The Protagonist : We live in a twilight world...

  Well-Dressed Man : ...

  The Protagonist : [cocks and point gun]  We live in a twilight world...

  Well-Dressed Man : ...and there are no friends at dusk.

  The Protagonist : You've been made. This siege is a blind for them to vanish you.

• Neil : Vodka tonic, and a Diet Coke. What? You never drink on the job.

  The Protagonist : You're well informed.

  Neil : It pays to be, in our profession.

  The Protagonist : Well, I prefer soda water.

  Neil : No, you don't.

• The Protagonist : This reversing the flow of time, doesn't us being here now, mean it never happened?

• The Protagonist : What's happened, happened. I get it now. But it's harder to take things on trust from people speaking half-truths.

  Neil : That's not fair.

  The Protagonist : You were a part of this before we met. Were you working for Priya?

  Neil : No.

  The Protagonist : Who recruited you, Neil?

  Neil : Can't possibly do you any good to know that right now. When this is over, we're still standing, and you still care, then you can hear my life story, okay?

• The Protagonist : You really going back in?

  Neil : I'm the only one who can got that door open in time, right, Ives?

  Ives : I don't know any locksmiths as good as you.

  Neil : See? It's me in there again. Weaving another past in the fabric of this mission.

• Ives : They're running a temporal pincer movement.

  The Protagonist : A what?

  Ives : Pincer movement. But not in space, in time. Half his team moves forward through the event. He monitors them and then attacks at the end moving backwards. Knowing everything.

• The Protagonist : You knew it was me coming out of that vault, why don't you say?

  Neil : It's a lot of explaining when someone who's about to put a bullet into his own brain.

  The Protagonist : But afterwards?

  Neil : Thing's the same. I knew you'd be okay. What's happened, happened. If I told you and you acted differently, who knows? Policy is to suppress.

  The Protagonist : Whose policy?

  Neil : Ours, my friend. We're the people saving the world from what might have been.

• The Protagonist : This reversing the flow of time... doesn't us being here now, mean it never happened? Could we stop them?

  Neil : Optimistically, I'd say that's right.

  The Protagonist : Pessimistically?

  Neil : In a parallel worlds theory, we can't know the relationship between consciousness and multiple realities. Does your head hurt yet ? Try to get some sleep.

• The Protagonist : I've been thinking, we're their ancestors. If they destroy us, won't that destroy them?

  Neil : That'd bring us to the grandfather paradox.

  The Protagonist : The what?

  Neil : You went back in time, and killed your own grandfather. How could you've been born to commit the act?

  The Protagonist : What's the answer?

  Neil : There's no answer. It's a paradox.

• Wheeler : When you exit the airlock, take a moment to orient yourself. Things will feel strange. When you run, the wind will be at your back. You encounter fire, ice will form on your clothes as transferred heat is reversed. Gravity would feel normal but you're reversed from the world around you. You may experience distortions in your vision and hearing, this is normal.

  The Protagonist : Can I drive a car?

  Wheeler : I can't vouch for the handling. Friction and wind resistance are reversed. You are inverted, the world is not.

• Neil : It seems you need an introduction to a prominent Mumbai local on short notice. I'm Neil.

  The Protagonist : I need an audience with Sanjay Singh.

  Neil : That's not possible.

  The Protagonist : Ten minutes, tops.

  Neil : Time isn't the problem. Getting out alive is the problem.

• The Protagonist : [cocks gun]  I'm not the man they send in to negotiate, or the man they send to make deals. But I am the man people talk to.

• Ives : This is a proofing window. When you approach the turnstile, you don't see yourself in the proofing window, do not enter the machine.

  The Protagonist : Why not?

  Ives : You don't see self reverse exit the machine then you ain't getting out.

  The Protagonist : Is that gonna work?

  Ives : Yeah. See for yourself.

• The Protagonist : There's a cold war.

  Neil : Nuclear?

  The Protagonist : Temporal.

  Neil : Time travel?

  The Protagonist : No. Technology that can invert an object's entropy.

  Neil : You mean reverse chronology, like Feynman and Wheeler's notion that a positron is an electron moving backwards in time.

  The Protagonist : Sure, that's exactly what I meant.

  Neil : I have a master's in physics.

  The Protagonist : Well, try and keep up.

• Neil : But in the future, those in power clearly believe you can kick grandpa downstairs, gouge his eyes out, slit his throat, without consequence.

  The Protagonist : Could they be right?

  Neil : Doesn't matter, they believe it. That's why they're willing to destroy us.

• Neil : All doors are fireproof. Hydraulic closers, simple key and electronic triggers. Surprisingly easy once they've been locked down.

  The Protagonist : Why a lockdown?

  Neil : Power switches to fail safe securing the outdoors, indoors revert to factory settings. Then pickable locks, it's a child's play really.

  The Protagonist : Child's play? They're inside airport security, they have to worry about climate control not armed raid.

  Neil : So how do we get enough fire power through the perimeter to trigger the lockdown procedure. That wall of Freeport.

  The Protagonist : You've got something?

  Neil : You're not gonna like it.

• Barbara : You're not shooting the bullet. You're catching it.

  The Protagonist : Whoa.

• The Protagonist : I'll set you up as a go-between. But remember, to you, it's all about the plutonium. Or when we're done, they'll kill you.

  Neil : Won't you have to do that anyway?

  The Protagonist : I rather be my decision.

  Neil : So do I. I think.

• The Protagonist : To do what I do, I need some idea of the threat we face.

  Barbara : As I understand it, we're trying to prevent World War III.

  The Protagonist : I'm not seeing Armageddon here. Nuclear holocaust?

  Barbara : No. Something worse.

• Andrei Sator : It wasn't a mistake. I made the bargain I could. What was yours? You fight for a cause you barely understand with people you trust so little you've told them nothing. When I die the world dies with me and your knowledge dies with you. Buried in the tomb like an anonymous Egyptian builder sealed in a pyramid to keep his secret. Your faith is blind, you're a fanatic.

  The Protagonist : We're so fanatical for trying to destroy the world?

  Andrei Sator : We're not I'm creating a new one. Somewhere, sometime, a man in a crystalline tower throws a switch and Armageddon is both triggered and avoided. Now time itself switches direction.

  Andrei Sator : The same sunshine we've basked in will warm the faces of our descendants generations to come.

  The Protagonist : How could they wanna kill us?

  Andrei Sator : Because their oceans rose and their rivers ran dry.

• The Protagonist : His ignorance is our only protection.

• Priya : There's a rally point offshore at Trondheim get yourselves up there. Ives has a team ready to invert.

  The Protagonist : You have a turnstile the exact technology we're trying to supress?

  Priya : Fighting fire with fire is a treacherous business. But there are some people in the future who want to continue the algorithm's journey into the past. You see Tenet wasn't founded in the past, it will be founded in the future.

• Andrei Sator : There's a walled garden up the road. We're going to take you there cut your throat not across in the middle like a hole. Then we take your balls and we stuff them in the cut to block the windpipe.

  The Protagonist : Complex.

  Andrei Sator : It's very gratifying to watch a man you don't like try to pull his own balls out of his throat before he chokes.

  The Protagonist : Is this how you treat all your guests?

  Andrei Sator : We're finished.

• Michael Crosby : Look no offence, but in this world where someone is claiming to a billionaire Brooks Brothers won't cut it.

  The Protagonist : I'm assuming I'm on a budget.

  Michael Crosby : Save the world then we'll balance the books. Can I recommend a tailor?

  The Protagonist : I'll manage, you British don't have a monopoly on snobbery you know.

  Michael Crosby : Well not a monopoly, more of a controlling interest.

• Neil : Vodka tonic and a diet coke. What? you never drink on the job.

  The Protagonist : You're well informed.

  Neil : Pays to be in our profession.

  The Protagonist : Well I prefer soda water!

  Neil : No you don't.

• The Protagonist : [Calmly, as three of Sator's henchmen prepare to beat him up in the restaurant kitchen]  I ordered my hot sauce an hour ago.

• The Protagonist : He can communicate with the future?

  Priya : We all do, don't we? Emails, credit cards, texts. Anything that goes into the record speaks directly to the future.