BlackBerry

BlackBerry is a refreshing, thought-provoking entry into the origin story film genre with its focus on the rise and fall of the first smartphone, the Blackberry.

This year alone has brought many one-named origin stories of successful entrepreneurs or companies. Every film since 2010 has attempted to capture the essence of The Social Network but failed due to its commitment to presenting a squeaky-clean image and engineered emotion. Director Mike Johnson decides to skip making this a purely prestigious drama like its predecessors and focus on the comedy within a tech tragedy. Even though audiences know what eventually happens to the first smartphone, Johnson keeps the narrative thrilling with moments where it seems like BlackBerry could pull through but ends it perfectly with a heartbreaking conclusion.  

Matt Johnson dives into the start of the iconic BlackBerry before it became the movement it was. BlackBerry begins with the friendship of Doug Fregin, also played by Johnson, and Jay Baruchel returns to cinema as Mike Lazaridis. Doug and Jay are stark opposites in how they conduct themselves but share a similarity in not knowing how to do business, They are the co-owners of a small Canadian company named Research in Motion. RIM has the same energy as a high school AV club with caffeinated techies running around led by the nervous Lazaridis. Doug and he are on the search to bring on investors for their latest project, PocketLink, and regardless of their clumsiness, it is a good idea. Lazaridis and his team have the next big idea but lack the competency to push it into the market. Through a life-changing pitch meeting gone wrong, they gain the interest of a recently fired Jim Basillie who takes control of the company.  

Johnson is much more interested in how success can bring mistakes along the way and the entire journey of BlackBerry. Unlike other biopics where challenges are glossed over and immediately solved, Johnson focuses on the unprofessional nature of his characters seen through Mike leaving his briefcase in the cab before a big meeting and Balsillie having no idea how the product he is selling even works. Shortly after that pitch, they launched into a new industry they created full of private jets and a company that no longer looks like an after-school club meeting but a functional business riding on the phenomenon of the BlackBerry. 

The American version of this film would have probably ended right at BlackBerry’s peak, but Johnson continues the story on to its tragic ending that is almost a cautionary fable on being out-innovated. Like his past films, he brings chaotic energy through the camera movement that and lively performances. The shaky camera maneuvers fit well as it follows people who don’t know what they are doing. There is a real messiness here because they are in uncharted territory and their clumsy conduction of business comes back in the end to hurt them. Never reaching parody territory, Johnson’s approach to BlackBerry’s story feels like commentary on how there is an emptiness in the people behind revolutionary products and companies. He uses this format to almost make fun of them but not in a mean-spirited way as the simplicity of what happened is weirdly heartbreaking. His ability to bring organic emotion into a story of technology doesn’t go unnoticed where that last scene of Mike fixing all the BlackBerry Storms one at a time will cause some tears. 

 Mike and Company’s world is completely shaken up by the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and acting on impulse he reacts in a move that cements his downfall: creating the BlackBerry Storm. BlackBerry was so ahead of its time that had many competitors who could never come close to it. One day the iPhone comes along offering the same functions but so vastly different that there is a moment of realization. BlackBerry can no longer compete in a competition it started and must accept its obsolete fate.

Watching this film does raise concerns about how society has shifted from having many cell phone variations on the market to becoming a world driven by one product: the iPhone. This isn't a new trend as humans have always been drawn to an uppgrade or the next new thing. Post 2007, the world has become so adapted to iPhones that it is insane to imagine operating in the year 2023 without one. Does the iPhone have the potential to meet BlackBerry in its final resting place or will nothing come in the future to dethrone it?

BlackBerry is a weird love letter to the optimistic souls who found joy in building their device only to eventually enter the capitalist machine that crushes them. It is not concerned with the device it's named after but the soul of Mike. By using the unlikely trio of Doug, Mike, and Jim, it separates the moral dilemma regarding business into greed versus foolishness. On one side there is Doug who loves his office traditions of movie nights and then there is Jim who will vandalize phone booths because he doesn’t understand how technology works. This leaves the impressionable Mike in the middle of his longtime friend and a man who will take him to the top. On paper, these roles sound very stereotypical of your classic biopic but Glenn Howerton and Mike Johnson bring a balance of passion and ferocity that makes this a humanistic story of an internal struggle. 

BlackBerry is not a success story, but a tale of self-sabotage.