TETRIS - Mark Reviews Movies

Tetris, Apple TV+

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 30, 2023

The longevity of "Tetris," the fast-paced and block-based puzzle game, probably has to do with its simplicity, which makes it easy to play and rather addictive. How else can one explain the facts of how many versions and variations of the game there have been, how many generations of technological advances through which it has endured, and how the very name of the game will probably be the biggest selling point of a movie about a lot of business dealings?

The last part brings us to Tetris, director Jon S. Baird's dramatization of the contractual and legal entanglements that came with the game's export from the Soviet Union to the rest of the world. The whole plot feels a bit like a puzzle, which is appropriate, even if the movie becomes so caught up in business matters that it's not nearly as fun as that notion sounds or the ironic nature of its high-stakes drama suggests.

This is about a video game, after all. Even when we're talking about one as precisely designed and culturally vital as "Tetris," there's still something a bit silly about how much financial, physical, and emotional peril the people involved in this story must endure over a game. Baird and screenwriter Noah Pink certainly recognize the inherent absurdity of this tale, which involves corporate malfeasance and government corruption and acts or accusations of international espionage over what's essentially a toy, but the filmmakers are also a bit too careful, perhaps, in actually leaning into that tone and approach.

This is very, very serious business in their eyes, too. It's difficult to take that notion too seriously, though, when everything within this story is so shallow.

Our protagonist is Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton), who's apparently the only honest businessperson in the realm of video game circa the late 1980s (It will come as little surprise to learn that the real-life person of our underdog hero serves as an executive producer here). While failing to sell one of his video games at an electronics expo in Las Vegas, Henk discovers "Tetris" and immediately buys the rights to the game for various platforms in his homeland of Japan. In fact, he takes out a multi-million dollar loan for his company, run with his wife Akemi (Ayane Nagabuchi), to distribute the game—a big gamble that Henk is certain will pay off quickly.

To attempt to detail the other players, arrangements, and conflicts within the global business dealings that make up the plot would take up too much space in a review. On that level, Pink's screenplay is admirable in how well it condenses most of this complicated web during a relatively brief prologue, stylistically accentuated by Baird's use of pixel art to make things seem as simple as possible. The major players are Robert Stein (Toby Jones), who acquires games for a media empire based in the United Kingdom, and the owner of that conglomerate Robert Maxwell (Roger Allam), as well as his son Kevin (Anthony Boyle), who has a chip on his shoulder about being seen as a lesser to his father.

Those three are convinced they have the worldwide rights to "Tetris" on every platform that matters, which comes as a surprise to Henk, who believes he purchased the Japanese rights indirectly from Stein. Anyway, the misunderstanding or intentional strong-arming leads Henk to travel to Moscow, where he hopes to get an ironclad contract for the game's rights on handheld devices—since he knows the biggest video game company in the world is about to release such a system and likes Henk's pitch to sell it with a copy of "Tetris" included.

Most of what follows in the story amounts to a series of negotiations, betrayals, and attempts to get a seat at various tables. To be sure, the extent and dangers of this process are fascinating, since higher-ups within the Soviet government are either suspicious of a foreigner trying to conduct business within the country or see an opportunity for personal profit at a time that the Soviet Union is on the brink of collapse.

There are scenes in which Nikolai (Oleg Shtefanko), the head of the government agency that technically is in charge of the rights for "Tetris," alternately negotiates with Henk, Stein, and at least one of the Maxwells, as KGB agents or Communist Party officials hold the threat of imprisonment over them for the shady acts that brought them here in the first place. As for the game's actual creator, Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Efremov) gradually befriends Henk in scenes that don't quite convincingly bring a human element to this story—just in the way that Henk's clichéd family problems don't add much to his character beyond his cool demeanor and upfront approach in business.

There's a superficiality to Tetris that makes it cold, no matter how odd and intriguing the story it's telling may be. Its main ideas have little to do with the game of the title—or games in general—or the people involved in it. Instead, those amount to the notions that money talks and business makes the world go 'round—both of which might be true but aren't very insightful or much fun.

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