Tetris
The rights to a video game provide the ammunition for a helter-skelter true-life thriller that boggles the imagination.
For the love of the game: Taron Egerton
Tetris is a video game that has sold over half a billion copies worldwide. And would that it was so easy. Its genesis was a complete accident, courtesy of the software engineer Alexey Pajitnov, who created it in 1984 on the office computer. It became a sensation in his native Russia and caught the eye of the software salesman Robert Stein, who saw its international promise and who sought the licencing rights. There the tale would have ended and there would be no movie, the latter which proudly declares: “This is based on a true story.” Indeed, seldom has a patents dispute proved so gripping.
The director Jon S. Baird (Filth, Stan & Ollie) has pulled a rabbit out of his hat on two fronts: by casting the eminently engaging Taron Egerton as the crusading Henk Rogers and by designing his film like a Tetris game. Thus, establishing shots emerge out of tetrominoes (geometric shapes), and the plot’s layers of gall, ambition, trust, greed and deceit accelerate as Baird’s game of cat and mouse hurtles towards its endgame. The convolutions are certainly hard to swallow, but no more so than the MO of a major character like Robert Maxwell (deliciously realised by Roger Allam) and the duplicity of the Soviet Union itself (the Kremlin does not come off well).
Taron Egerton provides the initial swagger as Henk Rogers, a snake oil salesman who happens to have a heart of gold and the honesty of a saint. He just looks (and dresses) like a carpetbagger. Henk has already designed his own video game, The Black Onyx, which he tries to launch at the Consumer Electronics’ Show in Vegas, when his sales assistant wanders off to play a rival video game called Tetris. Henk immediately recognises the commercial potential of the latter and sets about snapping up the PC, game console and arcade rights for Japan, where he lives. He describes it as “poetry – art and math all working in magical synchronicity. It’s the perfect game.” All he needs is a loan from his bank…
What follows is a boardroom thriller in which the stakes escalate as Henk’s ambition and scrupulousness is matched by the treachery of others and where only big money can make more money. Henk, like Sonny Vaccaro in Air, is the underdog with the big vision and Taron Egerton’s mounting desperation brings the viewer on side. Lorne Balfe’s driving, electronic, Tetris-like score pushes the action along nicely, while the action jumps between Vegas and Seattle and between Tokyo, London and Moscow. But even as the bad guys morph into villainous caricatures, Baird’s hand on the joystick keeps the tone this side of the broad satire of Armando Iannucci's The Death of Stalin. Whichever way you cut it, it’s a compelling, hugely entertaining piece that manages to be as moving and exciting as it is funny and outrageous.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Taron Egerton, Nikita Efremov, Sofia Lebedeva, Anthony Boyle, Roger Allam, Toby Jones, Ben Miles, Ken Yamamura, Igor Grabuzov, Oleg Shtefanko, Ayane Nagabuchi, Rick Yune, Togo Igawa, Matthew Marsh, Kanon Narumi, Dmitry Sharakois, Mara Huf, Miles Barrow.
Dir Jon S. Baird, Pro Matthew Vaughn, Gillian Berrie, Claudia Schiffer, Len Blavatnik and Gregor Cameron, Ex Pro Taron Egerton, Henk Rogers, Maya Rogers, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, Screenplay Noah Pink, Ph Alwin H. Küchler, Pro Des Daniel Taylor, Ed Martin Walsh, Colin Goudie and Ben Mills, Music Lorne Balfe, Costumes Nat Turner, Dialect coach Carter Bellaimey.
Apple Studios/AI Film/Marv Studios/Imagine Entertainment/Unigram-Altitude Film Distribution.
117 mins. UK/USA. 2022. UK and US Rel: 31 March 2023. Available on AppleTV+. Cert. 15.
