John David Washington is a CIA Agent and his Name in the movie is The Protagonist. The Protagonist Joins the undercover operation at Opera house. His life is saved by a masked soldier who "un-fires" a bullet through a hostile gunman. After seizing an artifact, the Protagonist is captured by mercenaries. He endures torture before consuming cyanide. He awakens to learn the cyanide was a test of his loyalty; his team has been killed and the artifact lost.
In a twilight world of international espionage, an unnamed CIA operative, known as The Protagonist, is recruited by a mysterious organization called Tenet to participate in a global assignment that unfolds beyond real time. The mission: prevent Andrei Sator, a renegade Russian oligarch with precognition abilities, from starting World War III. The Protagonist will soon master the art of time inversion as a way of countering the threat that is to come.