Tetris

Tetris is dynamic combination of thriller and historical drama.

This Apple TV+ original film, directed by Jon S. Baird, doesn’t attempt to replicate the entertainingly addictive block-stacking puzzle game because I don’t know how you’d make a movie out of that; it’s a fictionalized and creatively stylized origins story that plays like a Cold War thriller version of “The Social Network.”

Beyond the clichés and the added elements to try and boost the drama, Tetris at its core works because the true story is inherently an interesting one, and when the film sticks to these details, it's at its best. Like a difficult game of Tetris, this film might fumble some of its pieces, but in the end, it's ultimately a satisfying experience.

Despite Baird and Pink’s best attempts at cinematic tension and surprise twists, this story plays better elsewhere, in the retellings with a firmer grip on reality.

Tetris tries its best to make a story about international video game rights into something infinitely more thrilling, with a smidge better than mixed results.

The mix of busy comic exaggeration, affectionate ’80s nostalgia trip and gloomy mid-perestroika history lesson never comes together.

There’s a riveting story somewhere here about the crumbling of the Soviet Union and the stranglehold of capitalism on ’80s culture, but Tetris never quite locates it.

Filme maravilhoso, empolgante! Muito bem escrito, muito bem dirigido e editado.

(Mauro Lanari) In the previous "Stan & Ollie" (2018), Jon S. Baird had demonstrated his own skill in outlining an autobiographical buddy movie. This time the real story between the two founders of "The Tetris Company" (visible during a mid-titles sequence) was too skimpy and, together with executive producers Howard and Glazer (the same couple of "Thirteen Lives", 2022), he fleshed it out with pure inventions, from the spy story action to the 8-bit for nerds. Had it not been distributed by Apple, would it have been so pro-capitalist, an ode to Coke and to the Europe's "The Final Countdown" (perhaps a metaphor for the Soviet collapse)? A single exchange of jokes acts as a counterweight while on TV they broadcast the fall of the Wall: "Is this good news or bad news?" "Probably both." After more than 33 years, one would have expected a less hasty judgment.

Boring, too long, too many names to remember, too compicated. Better to just watch a YouTube video on the history of Tetris, with actual facts, photos etc. instead of "based on true events". A 5/10 and I'm being generous.

I seem to recall that I haven't played a game of Tetris in the last 18 years, and what I knew of its conception was sparse in more ways than one, so part of me thought it might be interesting to see what a movie on the subject could offer. But as it turns out, one huge problem got in the way, and that was the unfortunate eagerness of its creators to turn that story into something akin to The Social Network. And why is this a problem? Quite simply. Tetris is a film that aims to create an intricate story about something that was actually simple, and this carries with it problematic and questionable baggage when you begin to realize that the events unfolding on screen simply don't have that level of momentum, drama and tension to sustain that kind of narrative approach. Over-embellishing a ''real'' story carries considerable risks when you fail to make it as grandiose as you seem to propose. Taron Egerton, who is pretty much the best thing about the film, carries the weight of the lead role quite well, but you have to recognize the limits of the script he was given. Tetris is viable enough for you to check it out this weekend and forget it as quickly as you forgot the game. That is, if you're not a big fan of it. I mean I've seen more marketing for the Kpop group that has a song on the soundtrack than the movie itself, so obviously this is nothing more than catalog filler. Not badly made I say, but remarkably expendable.

Tetris takes an interesting real-life story and makes it needlessly convoluted. As time goes on, it becomes less and less real and more leaning into the realm of fiction. Just watch a documentary about the real-life events instead, they're far more interesting.