After what seems like ages, I finally resolved this whole Apple TV business for the expressed purpose of watching one movie and one movie alone. It’s the movie that’s been teased on every video I’ve done of every interpretation of the game that this film is based on to the point of it becoming a running gag.
So after all this time, what did I think of Tetris: The Movie: The Game Game game?
It is fine… and that’s really it.
The story of Tetris as it played out in real life – of which you can learn more of through various documentaries covering the subject or the recent Tetris Forever compilation release from Digital Eclipse – is a rather intriguing and fascinating tale of deals being made behind people’s back and greedy capitalists taking advantage of a Soviet system who weren’t used to such things. There were no heroes or villains to be had in this story; just people wanting to get their hands on rights to deals and not knowing who had what in the end.
The movie, as most movies based on true stories usually do, embellishes that story a little bit. I poke fun at the idea of car chases and such, but the film goes out of its way to introduce a nigh comical antagonist in the form of Trifonov, the Soviet agent who aims to get one particular party the rights to Tetris in exchange for a cut of his own. And of course, there’s the usual melodrama of two guys first meeting and not sure what to make of the other, friendships and family relations being tested, that sort of thing. I realize that this is a movie and we need to embellish things for the sake of entertainment, but some of this comes across as a bit excessive since the story of Tetris, in and of itself, is so ridiculous and convoluted that it practically writes itself.
All that said, taken as a movie and nothing more, Tetris is an entertaining enough drama with some good performances and some particularly good casting. The main actors – Taron Egerton and Nikita Yefremov – might not look the parts, but do a good interpretation of Henk Rogers and Alexey Pajitnov in a movie format. Worthy of mention are Ben Miles and Roger Allam – who plays the roles of Howard Lincoln and Robert Maxwell respectively – who are practically splitting images of the actual people they’re portraying that it’s almost uncanny. And bless his heart – Toby Jones is a wonderful actor and I love the man… but that man has ruined Robert Stein for me. Not because of bad acting, but now I’ve got this image in my head that Robert Stein is just another alias for Armin Zola who’s trying to secure Tetris for Hydra and shit.
Tetris is a fine movie for what it is. While there are some bits and pieces that feel a bit overexaggerated for the sake of the narrative, it is an entertaining piece of business that gets the basic points correct, even if the stuff around it feels like the typical Hollywood embellishments in terms of true story re-enactments.
dtm666 