Nerdly » ‘Tetris’ Review (Apple TV)

11th Apr2023

‘Tetris’ Review (Apple TV)

by Kevin Haldon

Stars: Taron Egerton, Toby Jones, Rick Yune, Ben Miles, Mara Huf, Nikita Efremov, Oleg Stefan, Roger Allam, Ayane Nagabuchi, Anthony Boyle | Written by Noah Pink | Directed by Jon S. Bird

If you are a retro / 80s nerd in the truest sense then I am here to tell you, my friends, that Tetris is about to become your new favourite movie. Yes, that game about the falling blocks you were obsessed with as a kid on your swanky Gameboy, now has a movie based on one man’s quest to secure the International licensing rights for one of the most, if not THE most played games in history.

Taron Egerton teams up with Cass director Jon S. Bird to bring us a movie that is loosely based (and I do mean LOOSELY) on the true story of Henk Rogers. No stranger to biographical flicks with movies like Eddie the Eagle and Rocketman, Egerton has a bit of a knack for turning chameleon for his art. As such this all meant that I was looking forward to checking out Tetris as I wondered ‘what could be so interesting about a story like this that it warranted 2 hours of my time. Well let me tell you…

Henk Rogers is an enterprising game developer who is yet to have any real success in the industry till one fateful day at a game expo he is introduced to a game called “TETRIS”. Instantly taken by its addictive simplicity he snaps up what he believes to be licensing rights so that he can bring the game to an international audience.

Henk soon comes to find that Soviet Union politicians, the higher-ups at Sega, Nintendo and even British newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell all seem to have some sort of claim to the game, BUT none of them legally do. A race ensues for Henk to try and outmanoeuvre and outplay his competition as he heads to Mother Russia in the midst of the Cold War in an effort to seal the deal. Cue the epic 80s soundtrack, saucy Russian accents, soviet spy stuff, backstabbing and general shithousery, all accompanied by some absolutely amazing, beautiful 8-bit graphics and a gnarly street chase in little 80s Russian cars.

From interviews and articles I have read since watching Tetris, it has become apparent that while this is based on the true story there is a certain level of admission to some creative license. The thing I struggled to figure out was which parts, because the whole movie seems so wonderfully surreal like some sort of Wes Anderson movie with a Tony Scott vibe turned to eleven [creative license was mostly surrounding the actions of the KGB – Editor Phil]. Honestly though, I loved everything about this movie. The plot is nuts but just this side of nuts so as to keep my suspension of disbelief intact. The soundtrack is the best of the 80s with some tracks even being the Russian version which just caps off some magical moments.

There is not a bad performance in this movie, with the likes of Toby Jones, Rick Yune and Ben Miles filling the ranks. Seriously, everyone is firing on all cylinders. I might even be tempted to boldly state that this is the best we have seen from Taron to date. And before I move on to my final thoughts and rating I want to give a huge shout-out to the cities of Glasgow and Aberdeen for doubling up as Russia. I mean there is very little difference between Glasgow and Russia to be fair.

Tetris is almost a perfect movie and contains one of the craziest stories for such a simplistic story, as the birth of a video game giant in Nintendo’s Tetris. Speaking of Tetris, this version is well worth 2 hours of your time.