In 2010, Aaron Sorkin created a sub-genre with the release of his Facebook drama The Social Network, a masterpiece and one of the best films released that decade. Since then, there have been plenty of imitators who have failed to even near the impossibly high benchmark set by Sorkin’s film. Think of the Steve Jobs biopic Jobs led by Ashton Kutcher or the Tesla biopic that couldn’t even be saved by Ethan Hawke’s lead performance. Then, there have been those who have come close to the greatness of The Social Network — Moneyball, The Big Short, The Wolf of Wall Street. BlackBerry, a new film from writer-director Matt Johnson, lands somewhere between the duds and the masterpieces. It’s full of fast-talking tech nerds and morally compromised corporate A-holes, it bites off a bit more than it can chew in telling the story of Research in Motion, but it’s still a good time, reminiscent of mid-budget dramedies that have all but disappeared in recent years.
BlackBerry quickly introduces its key players in a kinetic opening scene that sees Research in Motion owners Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and Douglas Fregin (Matt Johnson) pitch Jim Balsillie (Glen Howerton) on their prospective device. Without a prototype, the pitch tanks, but Jim is intrigued and decides to put all his eggs in the BlackBerry basket, pulling Research in Motion out of debt and kick-starting the development of the device that would change the way the world communicates.
From there, things go haywire and the story itself is incredible. What could easily have been a dry run through a hard-to-parse story quickly reveals itself to be much more thanks to Johnson’s incisive script that is informative without being boring. Both Baruchel and Johnson are great in their roles as best friends turned business partners, performing the ickiness of such a relationship without losing the heart of it.
Ultimately, though, it’s Howerton who steals the show. The actor becomes a domineering presence on the Research in Motion floor, whipping the team into shape, so he can make good on the mortgage he leveraged to clear the company’s debt. Many of BlackBerry‘s funniest moments come from Howerton, whose performance in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia feels like a precursor to this. Here, the actor is able to lean into his dramatic side to great effect even if the lack of full characterization for him (or any of the film’s characters) make it hard to fully invest.
As BlackBerry moves through the years to the inevitable invention of the iPhone and Apple’s usurpation of Research in Motion as the dominant cell phone, an interesting portrait of the collective attention span in the Internet Age reveals itself. The team at Research in Motion is constantly moving on to the next innovation, the next upgrade, the next thing that will put them and keep them at the top. Whether that’s the amount of users its network is capable of holding at once or some software or gadget update that is crucial to stay ahead of competitors, nothing is ever okay at the moment. The Research in Moment team is always worried about the future, never able to relish in the successes of the present.
It’s during this race that BlackBerry loses some of its steam. We know the device is doomed to fail not of its own flaws, but because the world is bound to move on. It’s no wonder that, when a video of Steve Jobs introducing the first iPhone pops up, that’s when BlackBerry begins to feel alive again. Despite its sagging middle, the film has a Succession-lite sort of style in its camera work and deadpan humor that manages to retain its grip on audiences. Like watching a car crash or a slow-motion action scene, there’s something about BlackBerry that makes it hard to look away even as the ending comes and everything crashes down.
BlackBerry premieres in theaters on May 12. The film is 121 minutes long and rated R for language throughout.
