SXSW Film Review: Tetris

In 1989, a large hunk of the world was introduced to the heroin in digital form that was Tetris, the interlocking blocks game that became of the most popular video amusements ever to lock in eyeballs.

Developed in the Soviet Union a few years earlier, Tetris also comes with an intriguing backstory, one made into an entertaining if not terribly thrilling thriller in Tetris, which premiered last night at SXSW.

The year is 1987 and Henk Rogers (Rocketman star Taron Egerton), the Dutch-American, Japan-based head of tiny game publisher Bullet-Proof, is watching his computer version of Go tank at the Consumer Electronics Show. That’s when he discovers Tetris a few booths over and immediately becomes convinced that he needs to license this game as soon as humanly possible. In fact, he’s willing to risk his family’s house and income on it and, given the complexities if licensing a videogame from a Soviet company as the country is falling apart, eventually his own personal safety

Director Jon S. Baird adds a canny visual flare with 8-bit animated sequences which serve as character introductions and sharp act breaks (and will appeal to the nostalgia-driven Gen X-ers who will at least be curious about the story of the game that caused them to dream in falling blocks). Indeed, during a key car chase, every bump and bonk causes the cars to pixelate, as if to remind viewers that exact verisimilitude might not be the reason to watch Tetris.

The script by Noah Pink feels distractingly expository at first – everyone says exactly what they are thinking and doing all the time. By 30 minutes in, one understands why – the machinations of the travel, bribery requests and licensing negotiations that went into bringing Tetris to users outside of the Soviet Union are incredibly complicated and, even via a straight-forward script, it is easy to get a little lost.

The short version: while working for a Soviet government computer agency, Alexey Pajitnov (an excellent Nikita Efremov) developed Tetris on a computer that didn’t even have a graphics card. It was bootlegged all over the Soviet Union, attracting the attention of fellow game publishers Andromeda owner Robert Stein (Toby Jones) and Mirrorsoft owner and media mogul Robert Maxwell (Roger Allam), who has friends in high Soviet places, and his wormy son Kevin (Anthony Boyle), all of whom have to deal with various Russian governmental forces who are beginning to suspect just how valuable Tetris is. Seriously, this thing often feels like a somewhat light-hearted drug smuggling movie: call it The Tetris Connection.

Everyone has an angle, everyone is trying to out-think each other, from the local translator Sasha (Sofia Lebedeva) to the increasingly corrupt Valentin Trifonov (Igor Grabuzov), a KGB agent determined to make himself rich. There are deals and double-deals, contracts that aren’t enforceable over licensing rights that may or may not exist and cash access to which various players may or may not not have, all as the Soviet Union is inching towards the end of an era.

It all plays out as a tad more weightless than it could be, thanks largely to Egerton’s single-minded yet salesman-upbeat determination to get Tetris into the wider world and the constant, low-level, video-gamey score.

Tetris

Headliners, World Premiere

This article appears in March 10 • 2023.