Tetris (2023)

Plot of Tetris: It is 1984. Henk Rogers is a computer game developer who, while exhibiting at a Las Vegas computer show comes across Tetris. He takes steps to gain the rights to its distribution in Japan, where he lives with his Japanese wife and children. This involves him travelling across the world, in the end to Moscow where he confronts the owners of the game, the Russian company ELORG. He finds that some of the rights have been sold to Brit, Robert Stein, who in turn has sublet them to Mirrorsoft. It is a complex situation involving computers, undefined, consoles and arcade games. But Nintendo in Seattle reveal to him the hand held Gameboy giving him a new avenue for exploration, but he has to face up to Robert Maxwell of the Mirror Group and his son Kevin – Mr Maxwell, corrupt Russian officials and the KGB. On his side appear to be Pajitnov the developer of the game and Belikov, the boss of ELORG. Henk has borrowed $3 million against his house which he will lose if it all goes south.

Content: No sex or nudity. Some drinking. Henk progresses from seeing the game first at the Las Vegas show, sees the bank, goes to Russia, negotiates with Nintendo, discovers the Gameboy. All of this is pretty new stuff in 1984. Russia is a problem country although Gorbachev is now the president so there is a bit of relaxation, even so the KGB monitor everything Henk does, including providing his translator, unbeknown to him. Hence there is a lot of action behind the scenes. The repulsive Robert Maxwell belittles his son Kevin and thinks he holds all the cards because of his friendship with the Russian president. When it comes to it, Maxwell is unable to stump up the required $1 million to secure the rights to the game, giving Henk and Nintendo a window of opportunity. But Robert Stein is also in the picture and is a shrewd operator.

A View: This film rolls along pretty well and despite the complexity of the real events, keeps us abreast of what is happening, and why. It captures the atmosphere of Russia pretty well, the grim greyness of Moscow being well represented by bits of Glasgow and Aberdeen. It is an Apple film so it was actually a streamed presentation, and apparently cost $80 million to make. This number did make me wonder how a production using Aberdeen as a backdrop could have cost so much, but no matter. Give it a go if you like that sort of thing.

Fun Fact: The director included a lot of swearing to ensure that it received an ‘R’ classification, just to make sure we all know it is not a kid’s film.