Tetris movie is a surprisingly slick thriller about the iconic game
Whatever your level of video game experience, chances are you have played Tetris. The most adapted video game of all time found success in the early 90s and has been available on virtually every platform – latterly including mobile phones, ever since.
Simple to learn but fiendishly tricky to master, the story of how it came to be a gaming icon has been brought to film by Apple.
Tetris (the movie) is not the story of how Tetris (the game) came to be. Rather, how a risk-taking game designer Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton) brought it to the world. Discovering the addictive game at a games expo, Rogers bets everything he has on securing the rights to publish it in Japan. However, when he sees the opportunity to launch it on Nintendo’s new Game Boy device, he risks his safety to go behind the iron curtain to find the game’s Russian inventor, Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Yefremov).
If a fight for intellectual property rights sounds dreary, rest assured director Jon S Baird (Filth, Stan & Ollie) has stretched the truth in pursuit of entertainment. Pitching itself somewhere between a warts-n-all biopic and a heist movie, there are aspirations to do for Tetris what The Social Network did for Facebook. It doesn’t quite get there, with the third act in particular abandoning any pretence of social commentary in favour of a ludicrous chase.
However, for what could have been incredibly dry subject matter, the story bubbles along with plenty of visual flair and 80s references. Having played soldier Edward Brittain, Eddie The Eagle Edwards, and Elton John, Egerton is the kind of versatile actor you need to make real life figure Henk Rogers relatable.
His desperate risk-taking and unshakable belief that the game is going to be huge works because you know he’s right. Egerton has a variety of strong character actors to bounce off, including Toby Jones as the first Westerner to discover the game, and Roger Allam as slimy mogul Robert Maxwell.
Product biopics are a growing subgenre in Hollywood (the story of Air Jordan shoes is in cinemas next week), and Tetris shows they can be hugely entertaining, if a little historically loose.