Directed By Jon S. Baird

Starring – Taron Egerton, Nikita Efremov, Toby Jones

The Plot – The story of how one of the world’s most popular video games found its way to players around the globe. Businessman Henk Rogers (Egerton) and Tetris inventor Alexey Pajitnov (Efremov) join forces in the USSR, risking it all to bring Tetris to the masses.

Rated R for adult language

Tetris — Official Trailer | Apple TV+ – YouTube

POSITIVES

Noah Pink’s script is proof that anything can be made appealing for the sake of the silver screen, especially when that culturally-cherished property takes the route of gripping biopic on its way to sifting through what is essentially two hours of legal litigation. If that doesn’t sound exciting to you, then the atmospheric and visual rendering of a spy thriller directly in the middle of the Cold War certainly should, with Tetris itself established as the intellectual warfare between America, Russia and Japan that conjures with it an intriguing insight into what was once celebrated as the world’s most popular game, complete with a breezy introduction into the manufacturing and concept of the game that wastes little time in luring its audience into the stakes and circumstances of such a creative inception. As previously hinted at, the visuals play a commanding role in articulating a distinct personality for the integrity of the game, complete with 8-bit dissolving transitions, colorfully pixelated character introductions, and of course level by level storyboards, which not only instill timely warmth and infectiousness to the engagement, but also pushes the creative envelope by dividing the movie’s many conflicts into individualized chapters that resonate effectively towards episodic structures within the gaming world of yesterday. Iconic composer Lorne Balfe also gets in on the fun with an electronically synth-heavy score that garners more than a few familiar sound bites of iconic 8-bit properties, while equally plugging into the pulse of pop culture favorites like Europe’s “The Final Countdown”, Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out For a Hero” and Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” that are each realized flunently with the kind of geographic relevance that the story permeates from in each of the scenes that uses them cleverly. As for performances, Egerton has once again supplanted another immersive commitment to character that not only attains with it a seamless American accent as a result of his dedicated articulence, but also a complexity in character that equally affords him both the kind of radiant charisma we’ve come to expect, but also the hefty layering of dramatic intensity that rounds him out as one of the most captivating of the next generation. Nikita Efremov also calls upon a lot of heart and humility that don’t often pertain to one-dimensional Russian characters during this established time frame, and when sharing the screen with Egerton, elicits an endearing almost brotherly bond between them that helps to transcend their country’s global conflict, in turn solidifying the importance of the escapism in a game being played during a time of grave uncertainty.

NEGATIVES

As expected in a biopic for the screen, not everything is entirely factual about the material, and while I have no problems with fabricating history for the sake of making an entertaining narrative, it tends to reach ridiculous lengths during a third act climax that feels like the antithesis to everything that was beautifully built about the film previously to it. The climax of the movie involves a big high-speed car chase, that, while effectively riveting in its rendering, gives the script an unintentional lack of confidence within the film it was building, trading in the litigation for the kind of action-heavy sequences that could be found in any film of the genre. For my money, this film is best and most entertaining when illustrating the distrust and discontent of Henk and his rival suitors in the stuffy surroundings of a bugged office building, and taking it out of those settings channels an unnatural evolution and desparation that convolutes an already effective conflict with artificial fluff of the most unnecessary variety. In addition to this, while the pacing is surprisingly and consistently speeding throughout the extent of its storytelling, the brisk speed and continued urgency led to problems with the engagement, primarily during the opening act, where so much happens during the opening twenty minutes that would typically be the first hour of an entertaining narrative. Because the film incorporates so many angles but in a simplistic approach, the film often feels heavier than it actually is, and because of such makes the experience feel every minute of its weight from the abundance of subplots and characters introduced to the forray that it’s frequently distributing, leaving us with a bit of creative whiplash that we’re offered minimal relief from throughout.

OVERALL
Like the game its story is based on, “Tetris” is clever, speedy, and often times addicting, allowing the nostalgic charms of its imbedded personality in production to exceed some of the film’s more problematic instances of insincerity. It’s an example of the outside of the box approach that video game movies need to finally be successful, and with the exubberant charms of Taron Egerton caught in the middle of this Cold War captivity, proves that some games need the right visionary behind it to attain Nintendo power.

My Grade: 7/10 or B