REVIEW: Tetris [2023]

Rating: R | Runtime: 118 minutes
Release Date: March 24th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Apple TV+
Director(s): Jon S. Baird
Writer(s): Noah Pink

Good ideas have no borders.

While it’s based on a true story, Jon S. Baird’s Tetris is still all about entertainment. You don’t have Noah Pink write a climactic car chase through Moscow that rivals a Bourne film insofar as its crazy maneuverings onto curbs and through cross traffic if your goal was verisimilitude (regardless of whether some version of the scene did actually occur).

And since Henk Rogers and Alexey Pajitnov are both producers on the film (along with the former’s daughter Maya, who took over as CEO of their Nevada-based company), it’s probably easier to think of this adaptation as an anecdote over drinks. Because bringing the game to the world was surely a harrowing experience considering life behind the Iron Curtain then. But embellishment and fantasy can’t help poking their way in too.

The whole plays like a Bridge of Spies sibling directed by Adam McKay. It’s fast-paced and at times absurd with Rogers (an always game Taron Egerton) doing whatever it takes to put his comparatively modest hat in the ring despite his direct competition being Robert (Roger Allam) and Kevin Maxwell (Anthony Boyle). The one thing this programmer-turned-salesman has going for him is likable charm.

Where Kevin is demanding people call him “Mr. Maxwell”, Henk is sneaking into Nintendo of America to crack jokes and make certain anyone dealing with him knows he isn’t trying to pull a fast one—at least not one that will leave them in the lurch. He simply wants a cut. He wants what his expertise earns. Because if any part of this tale is true, it’s certainly that Rogers knew nothing about Soviet politics.

It’s why a line by Alexey’s (Nikita Efremov) wife (Ieva Andrejevaite) is so good. When Henk clandestinely comes over for dinner, she turns to her husband and admits that the American is “dumb but honest.” Those words work to describe the film itself since the fun of it all never undermines the pertinent facts of what went down. Because people were trying to fleece Pajitnov and his government-watched computer sciences employer ELORG (led by Oleg Stefan’s Belikov).

The Maxwells and middle-man Robert Stein (Toby Jones) knew the game and knew they could finagle their way into underselling the USSR to maximize their own profits. It leads to more examples of Rogers’ ignorance of the situation when he flies to Russia under risk of arrest to unwittingly educate Belikov and the KGB (Igor Grabuzov’s Trifonov) about just how shady things had become.

That this international ordeal bringing in Nintendo big wigs (Ken Yamamura and Ben Miles), an unsuspecting translator (Sofya Lebedeva), and the might of capitalist and communist entities in search of windfalls alike might have played a major role in the fall of the USSR is the real draw.

Even if the film is also embellishing that aspect, it doesn’t negate the fact that this was a volatile moment when something as apparently simple as a videogame could legitimately stand-in for the entire concept of intellectual property and political power as it concerns a nation in flux. The licensing rights to publish Tetris becomes akin to government secrets with multiple agents seeking the upperhand to literally and figuratively steal it from the KGB’s grip. So, of course its retelling is a bit silly. Laughing is surely the only way Rogers could sleep considering just how close to death he probably came.