By Seth Lukas Hynes
Tetris
Starring Taron Egerton, Nikita Yefremov and Toby Jones
Rated M
4/5
Tetris is a fun, clever historical thriller based on the true story of Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton), an American video game designer and salesman who travels to Moscow in 1988 to license Tetris for Nintendo.
Tetris has an Aaron Sorkin-style quick wit to the dialogue, the visuals often pay tribute to retro video game aesthetics and flourishes in Lorne Balfe’s score draw from the iconic original Tetris theme.
While the intrigue over who owns the rights to Tetris is a little hard to follow, the film is fast- paced and draws strong suspense from Rogers’ perseverance, an atmosphere of conniving and surveillance on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and Igor Grabuzov as a slimy KGB agent villain. Egerton is an engaging lead as Rogers: a reckless salesman with a warm, honest nature, and it’s gratifying to watch him struggle against greed and suspicion to share Tetris with the world. The film has a large Russian cast, with Nikita Yefremov playing Alexei Pajitnov, the inventor of Tetris, and the plot draws parallels between business deals with the Soviet Union (in other words, the arrival of capitalism) and the Union’s eventual fall without feeling heavy-handed. There is also a compelling current of the main characters stretching the rules, both communist and corporate.
If you want a more grounded, dramatic video game-related movie after the kaleidoscopic, kid-friendly Super Mario Bros Movie, Tetris will not disappoint.
A suspenseful thriller with fun energy and surprising depth about one of the most famous video games in history, Tetris is streaming exclusively on Apple TV Plus.
– Seth Lukas Hynes
