Originally published to 8newsnow.com on March 26, 2023

There are movies that, upon announcement, seem impossible to translate to the screen. After all, who wants to watch a film about creating a social media platform? It’s not exactly the most enticing subject matter. Who could possibly care about a movie documenting the rise of objective, evidence-based statistical analysis in sports? Some would say it’s too “inside baseball,” … literally.

Yet, somehow, those topics have spawned some of the most magnetic films in recent memory, drawing viewers into their stories in ways that may not make sense on paper but are undeniable upon watching the movies.

The origin of the classic video game Tetris is another one of those projects that is an unlikely candidate for the big screen treatment. The story of how a puzzle-based video game made the journey from a little-known commodity in post-Cold War Russia to an addictive hit bundled with the Nintendo Game Boy in 1989 is not widely known. It was re-told brilliantly by Gaming Historian in an hour-long YouTube video, but could the story of Tetris make the leap to cinema like the story of Facebook’s creation and the fate of the 2002 Oakland Athletics did?

A “speedrun” in the video game world is when a player aims to complete a video game, or a part of a game, on camera as fast as humanly possible, usually for bragging rights. As Tetris begins, it feels like a cinematic speedrun. The film takes its viewers through character introductions and explanations of complicated intellectual property rights concepts at breakneck speed. Every scene moves on before it makes an impact. The film, however, starts to find its groove when it slows down to allow moments to resonate with the viewer.

That groove is found when protagonist Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton) meets the game’s creator Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Efremov.) At that point, Tetris becomes about the two of them finding common ground to overcome the worst excesses of both capitalism and communism. Efremov’s stand-out performance brings a grounded sense of peril that the rest of the cast struggles to elicit. Initially acting for the back row, Egerton’s performance eventually finds its footing when the story becomes more personal.

The film isn’t done any favors by its cinematography. Tetris has a “TV movie” visual styling, resembling a Saturday Night Live sketch without the jokes. The overly clean, colorful visuals forgo the gritty and dirty vibes captured by many films depicting the 1980s. Some grittiness would be quite welcome here. With lackluster sets and unnecessarily distracting faux 8-bit graphic interludes, aesthetics stand as the film’s weakness.

However, happily, Tetris mostly overcomes that weakness with likable characters and an enthralling true story that tells a tale that many likely thought they’d never care to see play out on screen. No, Tetris isn’t The Social Ne