Apple’s sleek but messy Tetris movie stars Taron Egerton, who is great 2023
After a deliriously enjoyable first half, Tetris, the new Apple TV+ film starring Taron Egerton, collapses into a disaster of its own design. Egerton plays Henk Rogers, a charming 20th-century entrepreneur who found riches in the hills and left no stone untouched.
Tetris was gold. In an early scene, Henk discovers the game at a 1980s conference, realizes its massive potential, and enters a high-stakes corporate bidding battle that leads to an international standoff. Director John S. Baird’s decision to make the film an espionage thriller and drug smuggling drama is brilliant. Henk’s negotiations with the Russians for the game’s rights behind the Iron Curtain at the height of Cold War tensions are the film’s best.
The grave-looking Russians question the delightfully animated American who wants to generate money for a Japanese firm. At its best, the film’s back-room dealings are reminiscent of Bridge of Spies, the great espionage picture starring Tom Hanks as an American attorney assigned by his government to broker a barter arrangement between two prisoners of war. He befriended a Mark Rylance-played Soviet agent.
The brilliant Taron Egerton appears in Apple’s elegant but chaotic Tetris film.
Henk has a similar friendship with Alexey, the local computer engineer who invented Tetris in his own time. Alexey reluctantly humors Henk in Moscow, drawing sinister-looking KGB agents but uncovering his own agency.
Henk first represents everything he hates as a communist. If you think about it, Henk’s only motivation is money, and while the film is not a criticism of capitalism—it literally foregrounds commerce over art by presenting this story from Henk’s perspective rather than Alexey’s—it certainly doesn’t suggest that the communist way of life, particularly in Soviet Russia, was ideal.
Russia scenes are almost hilariously dismal, either in Brutalist buildings or on freezing grey streets. Alexey brings Henk to an underground party and afterward to a crazy automobile chase using CGI Tetris bricks.
Lorne Balfe’s synth-heavy 80s background soundtrack and various establishing shots imitate the video game’s 8-bit graphics look. Tetris is a film about video gaming. It embraces the candy-colored look of arcade-era video games throughout the pursuit.
Despite their barely written characters, films like these fail to hold audiences. How can one support a narcissist? Tetris solves this problem by mixing Henk’s avarice with reminders that he’s a family man, giving us a few moments with his small children and wife. The movie wisely shifts to Alexey in the latter third, maybe realizing that Henk’s quest can’t sustain interest while he’s sharing the screen with a greater underdog.
By then, the film is too entangled in its own storyline to care about the characters or expect us to. This is unfortunate since Taron Egerton (Henk) and Nikita Yefremov (Alexey) give sensitive, fascinating performances. Egerton, a young actor with a wide range, shines here.
Even while Henk’s Tetris presentations to investors are hilarious, he never loses sight of the film’s tragic core: his shaky familial loyalty. Egerton, a showman like Hugh Jackman, is like a young Leonardo DiCaprio here.
Tetris doesn’t quite work, despite a great movie star performance, a catchy pop cover music, and loads of visual flare. The film’s second half never matches the first hour’s excitement, or maybe writer Noah Pink packed the story with inconsequential rubbish when he couldn’t determine what to do with the characters. Either way, sending a draft back for rewrites is a good idea.