BlackBerry

CinemaSerf

October 19, 2023

7/10

Matt Johnson's rather John McEnroe-esque "Doug" rather stole this tale of what was literally a tech-tonic shift in how we used our mobile phones. He, together with his boss Mike (Jay Baruchel), has been working with a small team of geeks to develop a mobile word processor that can send messages by text and email. It's funding they lack and it's during a fairly flawed presentation that they encounter "Jim" (Glenn Howerton), a savvy operator who knows just enough about the business to get them tha…

“Blackberry” is a film about the failure and spectacular collapse of the world’s first smart phone. Adapting Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff’s book “Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry” for the screen, director Matt Johnson creates an entertaining look at contemporary history with his tale of the rise and fall of a revolutionary gadget that changed the world forever. In this unconventional story of modern business failure at the…

kisaligol

January 1, 2024

4/10

The script seems to be written mostly from the perspective of Jim Balsillie, a businessman that was co-CEO of Blackberry, while engineers take a backseat. This follows the general tendency in film to glorify businessmen, treating the people who actually conceptualize, design and implement the products (i.e., do the core work that is societally useful) as mere sidekicks. The general timeline is right and many of the major events in the history of Blackberry are there, but none are described in…

I kept hearing people say this movie was actually not bad for a movie about BalckBerry, and you know what, they were right! Glenn Howerton plays an incredibly entertaining psycho as always. Jay Baruchel does the befuddled muppet thing with aplomb. And then the doofus sidekick guy who's actually more insightful than others give him credit for also does a good job. It's an easy mindless entertainment watch. Spoiler alert, the company does really well then it doesn't.

In one sense, this is a comedic action film. In another sense, it's a biopic of a lying, cheating, ruthless, tech businessman of a slightly less rank than Bezos, Zuckerberg and the "Don't be Evil" Page/Brin team. Overall, it's brilliantly cast and paced. It moves along at the perfect clip for this kind of action film. I was interested in the technology, but that truly wasn't the story.

With the release of such innovative communications products as the Apple and Android smartphones, questions began to circulate about the future viability of onetime market leader BlackBerry, a line of devices that subsequently went into rapid decline. Ironically, that real-life business world narrative itself raises comparable questions about the viability of a movie that tells the BlackBerry story. Nevertheless, writer-director Matt Johnson’s third feature outing brings the ill-fated account of…

The downfall part is a bit sudden as compared to the first 2/3 of the film, but still a very fun watch.

r96sk

May 22, 2024

9/10

Thoroughly fascinating to watch this unfold. <em>'BlackBerry'</em> reminded me a lot of fellow 2023 flick <em>'Air'</em>, two movies that were in fact released within months of each other interestingly. Both are great watches, with this being one I particularly enjoyed. It's super well put together. The two hours go by fast, the story is presented in such a way that there wasn't a single moment I was even the slightest bit uninterested - there's a great flow to proceedings. Jay Baruchel is…