"Let's start with that temporal pincer, a concept Ives mentions a few times. In your run-of-the-mill pincer movement, a force outflanks its opponent and attacks from two sides at the same time, stretching their defences. A temporal pincer, in the same way, involves troops attacking an enemy. However, they're reinforced by inverted versions of themselves, who are travelling backwards through time, and come armed with the knowledge of how the original attack went.
Attempting to execute this on film in a way that easily translates to a viewer is....tough. The final battle scene was hard to understand because as a viewer we never saw the first failed attempt. Through most of the movie, we get to see time forward with little hints that something is still not quite right. A car appears almost out of nowhere. Masked assassins appearing out of nowhere when nobody else knew the plan. There were a lot of subtle things that then led to the second part of the movie. This worked fine right up to the final battle scene. That is when the movie went sideways. They attack a base knowing that they have already attacked the base and that the inverse will correct what went wrong. The stick in the mud is knowing that the enemy chooses to do the same thing. Since the Inverse arrived, it is assumed that the first attempt did fail. The enemy also gets to use the inverse to then counter the counter. So if the enemy knows what they did to win and then understands what the good guys have to change to win, would not the enemy always be one step ahead? The only way the good guys win is if the enemy makes mistakes in the counter. Technically if the enemy wins the first time, they should never lose any inverted attempts, all things being equal.
Its a fun movie to pick apart. The execution of it could have been done better. I think it suffers a bit from not having a second movie come out that completes the pincer movement as a whole. This might have helped in the understanding of the concept and better cemented the relationship between Neil(Robert Pattinson) and The Protagonist(John David Washington). It was not until right at the end that I felt the friendship that they had developed. The actors did very well for what was attempted. Despite its flaws, I loved the concept of how the Protagonist starts out not having a single clue about what is going on, only to figure out that he is the one that starts the entire chain of events.
I give this movie a solid 8/10. A person has to pay attention, when watching this movie, to enjoy it.
