Tetris: Apple's Falling Bloc drama no joke, rather an addictive Cold War thriller
Tetris (13+, 117mins) Directed by Jon S. Baird ****
Who knew that the backstory to the gaming phenomenon that captivated the world in the 1980s could produce a Cold War thriller to rival some of that movie genre’s greats?
While a cursory glance at that title conjures up images of a cinematic nightmare akin to The Emoji Movie or the original Super Mario Bros. this delivers something far more slick – and serious – than anyone familiar with the addictive falling blocks could ever have thought possible.
Thankfully, rather than bringing to life the variously shaped pieces (maybe Blokus: The Movie will cover that conceit off one day), director Jon S. Baird (Filth, Stan and Ollie) and screenwriter Noah Pink (National Geographic's biography anthology series Genius) instead focus on the increasingly intense and hostile battle for the rights to Russian Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov’s (Nikita Yefremov) creation.
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As a programmer within the Soviet regime, he was unable to profit from western interest, the Ministry of Foreign Trade’s Elektronorgtechnic (Elorg) company instead charged with handling any potentially lucrative licencing deals.
However, unbeknownst to them, Pajitnov had already been approached by Andromeda Software’s Robert Stein (Toby Jones) who tied up what he believed were worldwide rights, on-selling slices of those to various game companies, including the British media magnate Robert Maxwell-owned (Roger Allam) Mirrorsoft.
It’s at this point that our guide – Bullet-Proof Software’s Henk Rogers (Rocket Man’s Taron Egerton) enters the fray.
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