Tetris (2023)

FULL SPOILER-FREE REVIEW @ https://insessionfilm.com/movie-review-tetris/
"Tetris offers a fun, informative true story about one of the most popular videogames of all time. Filled with delightfully pixelated transitions and just the right amount of humor, as well as the game's iconic music, it's a film that makes its two hours go by in no time. It may not feature the most innovative storytelling in the subgenre, nor will it totally blow your mind, but whether you're a fan of the game or not, it's a home viewing that I highly recommend!"
Rating: B

This starts off as quite a fun look at just how "Tetris" made it's way from being a cheap and cheerful game played in the Soviet Union into a handheld game selling and making millions across the globe. It seems it was all spotted by opportunist "Stein" (Toby Jones) who managed to get it to a games exhibition where it was then picked up by the tenacious "Hank" (an adequate Taron Egerton) who determines to make his fortune from this block-sliding game. What now ensues is quite a frantic and at times dangerous tale of licensing, sub-licensing, risky travel, corruption, bribery, the KGB and Robert Maxwell before we arrive at the denouement that, well, that is history! I thought the Jones quite good here, as is Roger Allan as the bullish billionaire Maxwell, but much of the rest of this was all just a bit too messy. Though maybe quite informative of the vagaries of the development process, it features far too much dialogue and the intricacies of the plot are not really developed cohesively - sometimes it feels really slow, then really rushed. It's set at a time when Gorbachev's USSR was about to go the way of the dodo, and so there is some fun manoeuvring, betrayal and money-grabbing going on, but just not enough to sustain this for all but two hours. It's OK, this, but nothing more.