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Tetris is the falling blocks game I remember playing when I was growing up, first hearing about it when it reached the Nintendo Gameboy in 1989, although I never had one of those, so it must’ve been in the early ’90s when I first played it.
As the game soared in popularity, it was released on all games consoles and computers, plus the arcades in the ’80s, and at one point in the ’90s, I even had it as a game on a watch!
Most recently, I played a new version of it that made for the ZX Spectrum, a computer which originally came out in 1982, so before Tetris was even born.
The film is intially split into sections as it introduces the characters, so ‘Level 1’ tells us who the ‘players’ are, starting with Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton – Black Bird), from Bullet Proof Software. He’s a Dutch man who’s selling a computerised version of Go, but a rival company is selling Tetris, described as a mixture of Tetra and Tennis. As such, after playing it for just five minutes, Henk states he was still seeing falling blocks in his dreams! We know the Nintendo Gameboy was released with Tetris packaged in, but were any other games considered? You’ll find out here.
‘Player 2’ is Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Efremov), by day, a programmer for the Soviet Computer Science Centre, yet created this game in his evenings, while ‘Player 3’ is Robert Stein (Toby Jones – Empire Of Light), an entrepeneur for Andromeda Software, who put the money into it, as he’d go round companies buying cheap games no-one had heard of, if he thought he could sell them for a fortune.
The other two main ‘players’ are the infamous Robert Maxwell (Roger Allam – The Truth Commissioner), who owned the Daily Mirror before he fell off a yacht in 1991 after the missing millions were exposed, and his son, Kevin Maxwell (Anthony Boyle – Danny Boy), the CEO of Mirrorsoft, who plays a very hardball game, yet the dodgy Russian government types play it even harder!
In fact, Kevin Maxwell’s such an arrogant aerosol, so that’s no surprise when you check out their family. After all, look at Ghislane!
Add in lots of ’80s-style synth music – including Japanese cover versions of popular ’80s tunes, and it’s very amusing and entertaining from start to finish, with brilliant attention to detail, such as during a car chase, when a car pixellates as it side-crashes into a parked car! There’s plenty of tension at the right moments, too.
It can get a bit bogged down and confusing during the discussions about which rights for the game are which, in relation to videogames, handheld, arcade etc
Overall, Tetris is hugely enjoyable as a gamer, and should be, too, even if you’re not. Plus, Roger Allam is hilarious as Robert Maxwell. Of course, he sounds like Roger Allam, but he does look a hell of a lot like the dead Maxwell!
Thanks to our friends at Apple TV+ for the screener prior to release.
Tetris is on Apple TV+ from Friday March 31st, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 116 minutes
Release date: February 17th 2023
Studio: Apple TV+
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Rating: 6.5/10
Director: Jon S Baird
Producers: Gillian Berrie, Len Blavatnik, Gregor Cameron, Claudia Schiffer, Matthew Vaughn
Screenplay: Noah Pink
Music: Lorne Balfe
Cast:
Henk Rogers: Taron Egerton
Alexey Pajitnov: Nikita Efremov
Robert Stein: Toby Jones
Robert Maxwell: Roger Allam
Kevin Maxwell: Anthony Boyle
Hiroshi Yamauchi: Togo Igawa
Sasha: Sofia Lebedeva
Akemi Rogers: Ayane Nagabuchi
Valentin Trifonov: Igor Grabuzov
Julie Rogers: Karin Nurumi
Minoru Arakawa: Ken Yamamura
Howard Lincoln: Ben Miles
Lincoln’s Executive Secretary: Moyo Akandé
Mikhail Gorbachev: Matthew Marsh
Nikolai Belikov: Oleg Shtefanko
Tracy: Mara Huf
Dennis Jackson: Miles Barrow
Bank Manager: Rick Yune
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.