Tetris Review: The Thrilling Game Behind the Game
Tetris is the new film from director Jon S. Baird, whose previous effort was the delightful biopic Stan & Ollie, and from writer Noah Pink. Starring Taron Egerton, Tetris tells the story of Henk Rogers, a video game creator and entrepreneur, who recognises the immense potential of the now classic video game Tetris and risks everything, including personal safety and the safety of his family, to secure the game’s licensing rights from communist Russia. High stakes indeed for some colourful falling blocks.
Tetris might well have been pitched as The Founder, meets The Social Network, meets Bridge of Spies. Not a bad combination really. Like The Founder, John Lee Hancock’s movie about the franchising of McDonalds, Tetris is about a plucky small fry entrepreneur, who lacks the talent to create his own hit idea, but has the vision to recognise someone else’s and the drive to make it a global phenomenon. However, Lacking the clout to secure the rights to Tetris himself, Henk must convince backers of the brilliance of his discovery. It is here that Tetris becomes most like The Social Network, David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s movie about the creation of Facebook, as Henk talks with a Sorkin-esque religious fervour about the experience he underwent when seeing Tetris for the first time. It is also here that Tetris is at it least convincing, as Tetris did not change the world like McDonald’s or Facebook, it just made a generation of school children late with their homework.
Thankfully, none of that really matters. What Tetris the video game does is provide the perfect MacGuffin (Hitchcock’s word for an object that acts as a plot device) around which to hang a thrilling, fast-paced plot about ordinary people trying to navigate a dangerous world of foreign politics, espionage and high level corruption – a similar milieu to Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies. We may not be invested in the success of Tetris, but we do care that Henk puts his life and the lives of his family at risk by pursuing the rights to the game, yet stands to lose everything else if he fails. We also care very much about Tetris’s Russian creator Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Efromov) a family man wanting a quiet life, who had no idea of his game’s potential, and who is himself put in danger by the ensuing clamour to take Tetris from behind the Iron Curtain, using any means, and sell it to the rest of the world.
That we buy into this so wholeheartedly is largely thanks to the two central performers, who convince entirely. Egerton holds the screen with his restless energy, delivering a compelling mix of inspiration and desperation, which is so palpable it seems to come off him in waves. While, Efromov as Alexey, Tetris’s creator, is perfectly cast as a reluctant hero, unable to resist his own principles. His performance provides the film with a much needed warm, human centre. That’s not to say that Tetris gets overly bogged down in personal drama. Baird’s film is buzzing with a tireless energy, and delivers double-crosses, car chases, and globe-trotting narrow escapes aplenty
It would be easy to see Tetris as a movie about good honest capitalism vs evil secretive communism, but that would be far too simple. Yes, there is corruption and much skulduggery on the Russian side, but then on the capitalist side of things, also vying for Tetris, is the media tycoon and legendary crook, Robert Maxwell, played by Roger Allam, who lends the film a gloriously malevolent gravitas. Is that sulphur I smell? Instead the film is about decent men trying, against all the odds, to get what’s there’s in the right way, to maintain a sense of morality in the murkiest of situations.
Tetris is an exciting ride of a movie, that comes at you as brightly, thrillingly and fast as the titular game’s famous falling blocks. You may not care about Tetris, but you will almost certainly care about the people who somehow brought Tetris to the world.
Tetris is available with Apple TV+
