‘Tetris’ Movie Review: A Conventional Story Gets An Insane Film Treatment
While Tetris’ filmmaking techniques and storylines feel conventional, the movie remains an insanely fun ride with great performances from Taron Egerton, Roger Allam, and Anthony Boyle.
Did you ever want to know how Tetris was created and sold? Jon S. Baird’s Tetris wants to answer that question by following the adventures of Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton), an entrepreneur and video game designer who has played the game of a generation: Tetris. Developed by Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Yefremov), Rogers travels to Moscow to secure worldwide rights for its video game, computer, and handheld versions. However, the situation proves to be complicated as he does not have a visa to enter a business building in Russia, and its competitors, Robert Stein (Toby Jones), Kevin Maxwell (Anthony Boyle), and Robert Maxwell (Roger Allam), are attempting to bribe the KGB in selling them the rights to Tetris.
It’s a fast-moving story, shot and edited with breakneck energy. The film is structured in “levels,” where each obstacle Rogers has to face to secure the rights of Tetris are represented by Level 1, Level 2, and so on and so forth. Living in Japan, he believes it will be the financial opportunity of a lifetime. He immediately goes to Nintendo to present the game to its CEO to which he’ll then travel to Seattle to port the game in the developer’s GameBoy. After Nintendo of America immediately wants in, Rogers will clandestinely go to Moscow, and that’s when the real movie begins.
It’s also where Tetris falters, never knowing if it should paint the Russians as the bad guys of the story or as the heroes of the whole affair. The film takes a rather centrist approach to Russia’s oppressive communist regime and decides to “both sides” the story. There’s Belikov (Oleg Shtefanko), who directly negotiates with the interested parties and thinks that by giving Rogers the rights, he will secure a profitable deal for his country. However, KGB agent Valentin Trifonov (Igor Grabuzov) disagrees and has made a deal with Mirrorsoft owner and magnate Robert Maxwell (the name rings a bell? Yes yes, he’s the father of…Ghislaine Maxwell.) behind Mikhail Gorbachev’s back. He will do everything he can to stop the deal with Rogers from occurring, even if it means killing him and his associates in a rapidly-paced (though horrendously shot) car chase. When KGB agent Sasha (Sofia Lebedeva), who directly works with Trifonov, finds this out, it puts her allegiance to the test.
By doing this, Baird and screenwriter Noah Pink attempt to paint a portrait that Russia’s politics aren’t as bad as their collective perception. Historically, the USSR was known to be a far more oppressive political system than the media and historians painted it at. By trying to “both sides” the issue, Baird fails at delivering a thoughtful portrait of the situation. Instead, he sees Henk Rogers stuck into two visions of Russia, one allegedly “good” and the other “corrupt.”
The rest of the movie is fairly conventional, too — Alexey’s story is far too predictable and sloppily written for its good, while the rest can be seen a mile away. The ones who will turn on the USSR are written on their foreheads, while it’s clear that Henk will get in trouble since he never listens to the KGB. Roger Allam, as good as he is at playing highly-caricatured rich assholes (and he surely loves being in those prosthetics that make him look like Colin Farrell’s The Penguin), has a far too predictable arc. Though it’s great to see him revel in the same evilness he used to play E.P. Arnold Royalton in the Wachowskis’ Speed Racer (a rather underrated antagonist, if you ask me). He shares great chemistry with the rest of the cast, including Anthony Boyle as Maxwell’s son.
Everyone is in top form, and the film moves rather quickly, even if the plot is inherently conventional and flawed in its political positions of Russia. Because of this, Tetris remains a watchable affair. Egerton magnifies the screen from beginning to end, and his American accent is far better than I would’ve imagined. There’s some fun to be had throughout the film’s zippy energy, even if its mesh of genres and themes doesn’t always work, it was still an interesting watch.