Tetris (2023)
“I’ve got the brains, you’ve got the looks. Let’s make lots of money”
Being the admitted film snob that I am and despite being as hooked and addicted to this game along with hundreds of millions of people all around the world, I was slightly hesitant in agreeing to watching this with my son recently and well, we’re all allowed to be wrong sometimes. Any opportunity to watch a film with my son is always gratefully received but I simply didn’t believe this based on true events story would be any good or indeed worthwhile of my taking any notes whatsoever and so instead, and rather ironically, we played an old school card game whilst watching a film about an old school game that bridged the divide between East and West as the countdown to the impending Gamer Wars began and the Cold War was supposedly coming to an end.
Regardless, I won at cards and my son won me over with his choice of film!
With a pun intended gaming licence to stretch the real life truth for dramatic cinematic effect, Tetris became the game that addicted a world to handheld gaming devices, the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union was no more and finally, finally, the Cold War between East and West was over.
The rest, as they say, is history.
But not quite.
The Soviet Union may have been splintered into fractional pieces but a hot war has long replaced the cold one before it and not just since 2014 and the bloody feud that has caused a vast loss of life in the border territory between Russia and Ukraine. War, as they say, is good for business, even the Cold War that was petering out in the mid to late 1980’s of hair metal, Europe and their “Final Countdown” and the Pet Shop Boys at the height of their powers.
Let’s Make Lots of Money?
Indeed.
All of which is brilliantly present in a really enjoyable slice of 1980’s fun either side of the “Iron Curtain” as our two main protagonists Taron Egerton and Nikita Efremov are joined by Toby Jones in a typically accomplished cameo role and particularly Anthony Boyle and Roger Allam who undertook the task of bringing to life the odious and despicable pairing of Kevin and Robert Maxwell. Whilst Allam portrays the barrel sized garrulous and conspiratorially shadowy figure of Robert Maxwell, owner of The Mirror Group of Newspapers at the time, Boyle is absolutely outstanding as his foul mouthed and foul tempered son Kevin in a film full of outstanding performances under the direction of Jon S Baird, he of the highly enjoyable and highly recommended Filth in 2013 and especially Stan and Ollie in 2018.
So from no notes taken and simply an excuse to watch a film with my son I didn’t expect to enjoy, came a film I really liked as I beat him at an old school card game whilst watching an old school film with a history that reverberates throughout the known world to this day.
All together now:
“We’re leavin’ together
But still it’s farewell
And maybe we’ll come back
To Earth, who can tell?
I guess there is no one to blame
We’re leaving ground (leaving ground)
Will things ever be the same again?
It’s the final countdown”
“Tetris” can also be found within my 7 volumes of “Essential Film Reviews Collection” on Amazon with each and every volume free to read should you have a Kindle “Unlimited” package. All 9 of my self-published books can also be read for free on Kindle (but go on, treat yourself to a paperback or hardback version!) and should you watch my short Youtube video linked in the middle of this article you’ll also find links to my Patreon and Buy Me A Coffee and other ways of supporting my work as an independent writer.
"The Essential Film Reviews Collection VOL.1" - link to Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.