You wouldn’t think the debut and marketing of a video game could be spun into an absorbing thriller.
You’d be wrong.
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| Software entrepreneur Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton, left) initially believes that marketing Tetris simply will involve securing publication rights from developer Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Efremov), but the latter quickly dismisses this naïve notion, pointing out that things are handled quite differently in the Soviet Union. Translator Sasha (Sofia Lebedeva) follows this conversation with open curiosity. |
Besides which, we’re dealing primarily with the Soviet Union, during the final few years before its collapse … so who’s to say that some of Pink’s imaginative embellishments don’t hew close to the truth?
A brief real-world introduction:
In 1984, early-gen hardware and software engineer Alexey Pajitnov — then working for the Soviet Academy of Sciences — developed a puzzle game on the institute’s Electronika 60 computer. Pajitnov titled his “falling blocks” creation Tetris, from a blend of “tetra” (four) and his favorite sport, tennis.
The Electronika 60 lacked a graphical interface, so Pajitnov’s first-gen version used simple spaces and brackets. The game caught on like wildfire once he shared it, and soon migrated to every scientific colleague with a computer. With the help of Vadim Gerasimov, a 16-year-old student with mad programming skills, Tetris was adapted for IBM personal computers.
But Pajitnov didn’t “own” his creation; the Soviet government did. He therefore couldn’t sell, license or market it. The game nonetheless um, ah, “traveled” to Hungary and Poland, where it came to the attention of international software salesman Robert Stein; he shopped it around the 1987 Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show.
What happened next was somewhat fishy, because Stein ultimately licensed a game that he didn’t actually own. Soon thereafter, it was spotted by Henk Rogers, a Dutch-born, American-raised entrepreneur living in Japan with his family; he smelled opportunity.
Baird’s film begins as Rogers (Taron Egerton), seeking a hit that might save his failing company, Bullet-Proof Software, stumbles across Tetris at a computer expo. He’s transfixed, and immediately sets out to obtain the right to license the game in Japan. Stein (Toby Jones) already has — questionably — sold American rights to video game developer/publisher Spectrum HoloByte, and European rights to Mirrorsoft; Japan remains an open market.
But Rogers soon learns that — Stein’s existing deals notwithstanding — the game’s ownership is murky at best, utterly bizarre at worst. The complexity of additional licensing involves not only nation-state rights, but also the proliferation of platforms — at the time, Atari, Commodore 64 and Amiga, among others — and their parent companies.
Ergo Rogers, with no shortage of brashness, becomes “the guy who goes to Russia.”
He’s hopelessly out of his depth: a one-man minnow swimming among sharks who include Stein; imperious British newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell (Roger Allam) and his arrogant son, Kevin (Anthony Boyle), who own Mirrorsoft; Elektronorgtechnica (“Elorg”), the Soviet entity that controls the import and export of computer software; and more than a few government officials and KGB officers who can see what’s about to happen to Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet empire … which, therefore, will open the gate for Western-style capitalism.
Everybody is savvier and possesses more business acumen than Rogers … but he remains undeterred.
On top of which, he soon acquires the one thing none of the others can claim: a genuine friendship with Pajitnov (Nikita Efremov).
And a kicker: Rogers also is close to Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi (Togo Igawa), which enables him to be one of the first outsiders to see that company’s first hand-held console, dubbed the Game Boy (a moment that Baird and Egerton shade with the grandeur of Moses receiving the stone tablets).
Yamauchi understands that Tetris would be the perfect game to help sell this new toy.
Although what follows still involves considerable wheeling and dealing — honestly, you’ll want a score card — Baird and Pink give this saga the breathless, freewheeling energy that similarly made Adam McKay’s The Big Short far more than a dusty economics lesson.
Pink also inserts generous dollops of snarky spyjinks, double-crosses and, yes, even a vehicular chase: undoubtedly wildly exaggerated from what actually went down, but no less fun. (As the saying goes, if it didn’t happen this way, it should have.)
Egerton’s Henk is utterly irresistible: a classic underdog Boy Scout with the pugnaciously stubborn, never-say-die spirit the actor brought so well to Eddie the Eagle and Rocketman. Henk is fully aware that he’s overwhelmed and outmatched; he simply doesn’t care.
Efremov’s Pajitnov is the yin to Rogers’ yang: quiet, thoughtful and serious. Having spent his life as a Soviet citizen, he knows better than to expect anything from the unfolding financial negotiations; he simply wants his game to be enjoyed by as many people as possible. And when Efremov expresses this humble sentiment, we believe him.
Henk’s Russian escapades are assisted by Sasha (Sofia Lebedeva), who serves as translator while he works his way up the food chain and ultimately secures an audience with Elorg’s Nikolai Belikov (Oleg Stefan). Lebedeva brings droll amusement to Sasha’s dealings with this upstart, her “translations” often embellished in ways Henk cannot understand (but we do, thanks to the subtitles).
Allam, familiar to British TV crime fans of Endeavour, is all but unrecognized as the towering, overweight Robert Maxwell (a superb make-up job by Mark Coulier). He’s a proto Rupert Murdoch: a ruthless business tycoon and billionaire who owns the Daily Mirror, and for a time owned Oxford United. Allam makes him thoroughly loathsome, and arrogant to the point of cruelty: a truly hissable villain.
Boyle’s Kevin Maxwell is equally patronizing and unpleasant; Jones’ Stein is better mannered, but still an opportunistic schemer who’ll cheat just as cheerfully as the Maxwells.
Baird’s two-hour film breezes along at an always engaging pace, thanks to the work of three editors: Colin Goudie, Ben Mills and Martin Walsh. Even at its most dire — and we do fear for Henk’s safety, at times — this saga never loses its playful atmosphere, which is enhanced throughout by delightful, early-gen computer graphics that introduce each chapter (dubbed Level One, Level Two and so forth).
Tetris is as fun and addictive as the game itself. I’ve no doubt viewers will rush to their resources of choice, as the end credits roll, to learn more about what actually went down. (Honestly, you won’t believe it.)
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