Movie Review: BlackBerry

Growing up, it felt like everyone knew someone who had a BlackBerry, the iconic smartphone with a keyboard that produced that infectious clicking sound. I know my father had one and still talks to this day about how much he loved it. BlackBerry phones dominated the cell phone market for years in the early 2000s. But now, they don’t even sniff the surface of relevancy in the cell phone market. How did the most popular phone in the world become nearly non-existent? Writer/director Matt Johnson breaks that story down in a funny, insightful, captivating way.

The film starts in 1996 in the small Canadian city of Waterloo where Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and his friend Doug (Matt Johnson) are going to pitch their initial idea of the BlackBerry, initially called Pocket Link, to Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), a cut-throat, intense salesman. Though the bitch from the socially-awkward Mike and Doug doesn’t go well, they are on to something and Jim sees it. After Jim gets fired from his current, he agrees to work with Mike, Doug, and their company Research in Motion (RIM), a company made up of computer-smart friends of Mike and Doug that has plenty of time to play Doom and have movie nights, as long as he is co-CEO and gets a large portion of the sales. Mike agrees, much to the dismay of Doug, and thus starts the beginning of BlackBerry.

We then jump to 2003. RIM has seen great success with the first BlackBerry and is only looking to grow. Mike is continuously trying to make the phone better and have a fun work environment while Jim is focused on the sales and making more revenue. While Mike obsessively works on the BlackBerry and fixes the problems that it faces, especially connection issues it faces, we see some of Jim’s unethical business practices. Though they are a team during this time, we start to see the flimsiness of the partnership between Mike and Jim, which ends up being bad for the company.

The final act takes place in 2007/2008. Despite being co-CEOs, Jim and Mike hardly speak. The company is a juggernaut in the cellphone industry and nobody seems to be touching them until Steve Jobs unveils the first iPhone. This game-changer challenges everything BlackBerry has done up to this point. Stressed about this, Mike can’t get ahold of Jim, who is focused on buying an NHL team and moving them to Canada. The company is in flux and things only get worse when they are getting calls from the FCC about the contracts of a few of their employees.

The story of BlackBerry is reminiscent of David Fincher’s The Social Network but the film’s structure is similar to Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs. Showing these three specific periods of BlackBerry’s reign gives us everything we need to know about the company and the people who created it and ended it. We see the incarnation, the peak, and the downfall. Johnson’s film moves at a lightning pace that kept me captivated the entire film. His dialog crackles, full of depth and humor. There is a lot of technical jargon in the film and Johnson makes it tolerable to understand while not making it dry or dumbing it down too much for the audience. It’s smart writing that keeps the audience involved throughout the entire journey. The film also looks at how greed and lack of communication can ultimately lead to the downfall of a company and the downfall of friendships.

Baruchel and Howerton both give great performances that drive the film. The performances could not be more opposite, but they are equally good. Baruchel plays the quiet, tortured genius to perfection. Mike wants to make everything perfect and will not settle for anything less than perfect. He’s meek and doesn’t care about the money and the success, just the product he is creating. On the other side, Howerton is a walking stick of dynamite. It is a performance full of energy and chaos. He owns the screen when he is on it and though Jim can come off as venomous and insane at times, Howerton always shows us how crafty of a salesman he is. Baruchel and Howerton play well off each other in their scenes together.

Matt Johnson’s third directorial feature is his best yet. Led by two excellent performances and a fascinating story told in a smart and interesting way, BlackBerry is another excellent movie about the rise and fall of a tech giant.

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