Tetris Review: A Video Game Origin Story Meets Political Thriller That Never Falls Into Place

Jon S. Baird’s Tetris seeks to channel the egghead aspirations of The Social Network and the spy-thriller intrigue of Argo and Bridge of Spies. It focuses on the bureaucratic maneuvers that eventually landed the game as a wildly successful pack-in for the Nintendo Game Boy, which doesn’t leave much room for a depiction of the game’s making or chronicle of its success. The film treats the latter as a given and in order to compensate for the lack of the former, it persistently and obnoxiously punctuates its narrative with bright, pixelated illustrations of its characters and locations. Various establishing shots are shown initially in pixel form, and parts of the story are even broken up with title cards that designate them as “levels.”

The person labeled “Player 1” is Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton), a fast-talking programmer turned businessman who stumbles upon the Tetris game at a trade show. He cajoles himself into negotiating the game rights for Nintendo, quickly realizing that the game’s legal ownership is far more complicated than he’s been led to believe. Ostensibly, it’s been licensed to companies owned by ill-fated publishing magnate Robert Maxwell (Roger Allam), whose son, Kevin (Anthony Boyle), deals with the shifty Robert Stein (a criminally underused Toby Jones).

But a binding deal has yet to be struck, and since the game was created by Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Yefremov) under the auspices of the Soviet government, any negotiations must be made behind the Iron Curtain. One scene depicts Robert running this dispute as far up the chain as humanly possible by going to his pal Mikhail Gorbachev (Matthew Marsh).

There’s a riveting story somewhere here about the crumbling of the Soviet Union and the stranglehold of capitalism on ’80s culture, but Tetris, as written by Noah Pink, never quite locates it. We see it only intermittently through Alexey, the only person with appreciable stakes in the conflict as a creator whose work is property of the state and a man with a family that must live in the colorless concrete world that the other characters merely visit.

Tetris feels as if it’s about to soar as soon as it brings Alexey and Henk together, almost poignantly regarding them as kindred spirits, but it quickly shoves the former to the periphery. After that point, the film’s focus is kept firmly on Henk and all the only-in-the-movies struggles, big and small, that are contrived for him to overcome, from using his house as collateral, to missing his daughter Maya’s (Kanon Narumi) school recital, to getting beaten up by the KGB.

None of this, though, is meant to complicate our sympathies for Henk. He’s the everyman that we’re meant to uncritically root for. His defining trait is said to be his nigh-altruistic honesty, which makes him a refreshing straight-shooter in the eyes of the Soviets compared to his weaselly competitors. Any depth or flash to the performance is entirely up to Egerton to provide, and while the very British actor acquits himself nicely, his talents aren’t enough to make the scene where Henk explains that he’s part Indonesian feel any less unintentionally jarring.

As the film progresses, it becomes clear why it leans so heavily on those pixelated animations inspired by the game. The boardroom arguments over “handheld Tetris” grow dull and repetitive, shot with a drabness that, intentional or not, rivals the Soviet landscape. Meanwhile, the trailer-ready dialogue consists almost exclusively of lifeless exposition, and when anyone actually plays Tetris, their faces are lit with such holy ardor that you expect their hair to be blown back. The game elements at least add an illusion of color and style to the proceedings.

But even the video game-esque cutaways are a cheat, rendered with the crisp, flashy newness of modern pixel art. In the end, the film’s obnoxious visuals are less concerned with approximating the sights and sounds of what it was like to play Tetris on the Game Boy or NES and more with cloyingly reminding viewers that this is a film about a video game, even though it mostly consist of people shouting at each other in meetings. By leaning on anachronistic modern glitz, the film all but concedes that it lacks the visual imagination to bring this premise to life.