The story revolves around Hank Rogers (Taron Egerton), a Japanese-Dutch businessman who owns Bullet-Proof Software. One day he learns about Tetris and is excited by the idea of bringing the game to the world market.
But the problem is that its developer, Alexei Pajitnov (Nikita Efremov), still lives in the USSR, which is quite closed to foreigners, in the realities of the communist system does not have full-fledged copyrights of the game, and all the issues must be. will be resolved at the highest level: with the leadership of Pajitnov, representatives of the KGB and the system itself, which rejects the foreign. And when other Western businessmen in pursuit of Tetris step in, days and hours start to run the bill for Rogers. Now this stranger in Moscow must somehow agree on a deal for himself in a foreign country, and preferably escape from prison, as Michael Jackson once said (it’s a gross omission that the composition is not on the soundtrack).
“Tetris” – by director John S. Baird, best known to the general public for his satirical drama “The Dirt” about brutal British police officers, and apparently his much-loved “boy” and Matthew Vaughn. gave us the Kingsman series, a modern, younger version of James Bond.
In their new films, both writers use all the well-established techniques with which their main hits are “fired”. Here is a dynamic arrangement and rich narration, and a look at the difficult subject of the clash of two ideologies, which periodically winks at the viewer, as if: “Look how funny everything seemed sometimes.” At the same time, what is happening on the screen is getting darker and more dangerous by the minute, no laughing matter: the little humor and ease with which the story enters the viewer is replaced by tragedy – where it is felt by the writers in the form.
The movie talks about the marketing and promotion of Tetris to the world market rather than its creation as a game. Edgerton’s hero doesn’t personally invent anything (other than a competent sales strategy), but like Ray Kroc, who turned McDonald’s into a mega-empire, he can smell the inconspicuous big money for many and bring all the right people together. to achieve the purpose.
On the contrary, he looks like the hero of Efremov (by the way, the real Pajitnov is among the producers of the picture) – a silent computer genius, frightened and tired. He resembles the Soviet Neo, who works at the Academy of Sciences during the day and develops computer games only for his own pleasure in the evening. Alexei does not even dream of making money from Tetris and is wary of all the hype that arises around him.
It must be said that Tetris, not surprisingly, sinned with all the usual stereotypes that people in the Western world looked at the Soviet Union. Essentially, all these elements of the plot with KGB officers, treacherous officers, and the Iron Curtain took place, but the way it’s presented on screen at least causes a grin.
In “Tetris” Moscow looks like a reinforced concrete “Metropolis”; secret services, of course, are based on a kind of basement, reminiscent of a giant cave (dungeons of the Ministry of Magic from Harry Potter, not otherwise); Nearly all Soviet folks who get in Hank’s way look like operetta villains: their eyes are bulging, they have an animal grin on their mouth, and their facial expressions are hypertrophied. As if without this lubok clue, the Western audience won’t be able to tell who’s the villain and who’s the victim.
In the last British mini-series Litvinenko, the characters also came to Moscow and found themselves in Lubyanka, but the inhabitants of these offices looked like living people: nothing attracted them, but they were believable, made of blood and meat. The only anti-hero of Tetris that you believe unconditionally and is interesting to watch, KGB officer Valentin Trifonov, and Igor Grabuzov, who plays him, not only steals every scene with his participation, but also surpasses everyone else.
The dynamics of the internal relationship between Hank and Alexei give way to an external impulse: the chases are replaced by a parade on Red Square, the low-level officials are replaced by Gorbachev, and the TV screen is filled with a series of frames. Hastily pieced together histories, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Soviet flag hoisted over the Kremlin. Not only is the audience bored with all this abundance, but also the plot itself, which is trying to squeeze so much into two hours of screen time. There’s no room for the hero Egerton, who turns from a greedy businessman to a close friend of Efremov’s character (in reality, Rogers and Pajitnov co-founded The Tetris Company in the ’90s).
As a result, Tetris is peppy in form but very tense in content, biographical about people from different worlds, united by a common desire to create and do it freely without the supervision of others. It’s funny that the movie itself, trying to sit on all the chairs at once, also resembles Tetris, only in beta: not all the numbers are successfully collected in a harmonious order, the program sinned with errors and is in dire need. improvements.