BLACKBERRY - Mark Reviews Movies

BlackBerry, IFC Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 11, 2023

Within a decade, the first smartphones, such as the ones of the eponymous brand in BlackBerry, went from revolutionary to outdated. Such are the currents of technological progress and the whims of commerce, but co-writer/director Matt Johnson's dramatization of the rise and fall of what was once the most popular communications device in the world sees the ever-shifting market as a stage for a very human comedy.

Yes, the BlackBerry line of cellphones as they were at their peak would have disappeared no matter what. Here, though, is a story about how pride, stubbornness, sacrificed principles, and basic greed ensured the brand imploded on the way out.

If the characters' motives here weren't ultimately about making as much money as possible, this might have played as a tragedy, and for one character at least, it still could be seen as one. Based on Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff's non-fiction book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry (The subtitle is too delicious not to include), the screenplay by Johnson and Matthew Miller is smart enough to know that this tale is both significant, because it dramatizes the first chapters of our mobile device-dependent society, and, because it also is about a soon-to-be forgotten example of that kind of device, frivolous.

That feels like the perfect combination, though, for what the story is really about, as it charts a group of people's inability to change themselves and with the times or their misfortune to change in the worst possible way from their early idealism and belief in some kind of ethical practices. What better description exists, really, to note the foibles of human nature? To be sure, they are significant, because they define our history and day-to-day lives, but within the scope of the universe and on account of how we seem incapable of learning from the consequences of them, those flaws might as well mean nothing.

We can laugh at and with them, at least, and that's the primary philosophy of the filmmakers with this story. It begins in the olden days of 1998, as it must and will seem to every generation that has grown up with smartphones being a simple fact of life. Mike Lazardidis (Jay Baruchel) and Doug Fregin (Johnson) have figured out how to make a longtime dream of engineers a reality: how to put a computer with an internet connection into a handheld device.

One of the smaller examples of the multiple neat tricks of Johnson and Miller's screenplay is how well it explains the fundamental technology behind a concept we now take for granted, while also giving us context to just how groundbreaking it was at the time. This story doesn't depend on us understanding how smartphone works and how the tech evolved in a matter of only a few years, but the filmmakers do the work to explain it to us anyway, if only because it gives us a sense of Mike as someone who knows, feels the need to explain, and is wholly committed to this innovation.

He and Doug want to sell idea of the device to a manufacturing company. For better and for ill, they end up pitching it to Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), a cutthroat businessman who oversteps his way out of a cushy job and tries to strong-arm his way into the role of CEO at the little company Mike and Doug created. Doug, a fun-loving guy who's basically his friend's conscience by way of movie quotes, sees through Jim's wheeling and dealing, but Mike wants to make his handheld computer-phone a reality. If he has to give the pitiless Jim—played as a force of unbridled ego and cunning by a frighteningly committed Howerton—free rein to do what he wants to achieve that, so be it.

It's such a simple source of inevitable conflict that only someone fully naïve about the nature of business—and, for that matter, people—and/or desperate to fulfill a dream wouldn't see it from the start. That's Mike, of course, and as he's so capable of doing, Baruchel embodies the awkwardness of the character. Beyond that, though, his performance fully convinces us of a man whose mind is constantly at work. Over the course of the story's near-decade of progression, Baruchel undergoes a transformation of personality, becoming more confident and ruthless, and body, gradually developing a hunch from either the weight of the pressures or the anatomical mechanics of spending years constantly staring down at a phone.

The story is essentially divided into three chapters, with the early days of Mike and Jim's partnership being the first and all of the technological advances, individual ambitions, and corrupt business practices culminating into the escalating chaos of the third act. In between, we get a picture of Mike and Jim's company at its height, and there's a real subtlety to the way Johnson and Miller show Mike changing, Jim only becoming more set in his ways, and the setups for what will eventually lead to the downfall of this company and, to one degree or another, everyone within it.

Much of that apparent ease of storytelling comes from Johnson's approach, such as the way the company's success after a five-year jump is communicated by way of a series of shots that gradually reveal its new office complex. Johnson and cinematographer Jared Raab provide a handheld, faux documentary style that matches the intimacy of this material as a character-focused comedy. It also gives the filmmakers a few chances to incorporate understated gags within the style, such as how Jim is introduced with what looks like a fourth-wall-breaking moment, as if the character is terrified of anyone seeing him for who he is, and how a close-up of Michael Ironside's hard-nosed taskmaster, brought in to keep the happy rabble of engineers miserably working, makes the camera shake more than usual.

BlackBerry has a lot to say about the changing winds of technological advancement and the basics of for-profit business gradually and constantly making everything—from gadgets, to principles, to people—obsolete over time. It's a harsh reality, and Johnson is clever in the ways he forces us to consider and laugh at it, as well as ourselves for making it so.

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