Review by C.J. Bunce
“Do I get one of those?”
It was the first thing I asked at a job interview in the telecom industry as the “Blackberry”–the world’s first smartphone–was sneaking into the marketplace (sorry, no user ever capitalized the second B). Once I had it, it changed doing business forever, and the same thing happened everywhere. The Research in Motion (RIM) wireless device would begin its incarnation like a pager but would grow into a fantastic device that would expand its features before the advent of the polished smartphones that would replace it in the ongoing battle for the next big thing in tech. I had nearly every major version (two still work just like new, unlike the Androids and iPhones that must be replaced every few years). It’s a truth in the history of technology that you wouldn’t be living and working out of a cell phone today if the concept hadn’t first been road-tested by status-conscious business leaders across the world first, thanks to a few nerd-geniuses–later called geeks–at Research in Motion.
As revealed in the 2023 film BlackBerry, typing with your thumbs is much easier than we first thought, and it would be even easier somehow to type on a keyboard that doesn’t have keys at all, a truth that would result in other smartphones wiping away the future of the BlackBerry device seemingly overnight. Directed by Canadian Matt Johnson (in a dual role as co-founder Doug Fregin) and starring Fanboys and RoboCop’s Jay Baruchel as founder Mike Lazaridis (who would go on to invent tech for film editing that would earn him an Academy Award), BlackBerry documents their efforts to take wireless technology forward via a very typical 1990s dot-com band of employees. The indie film co-stars Serenity and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Glenn Howerton, as the ever-scowling, tightly-wound driver behind the whole endeavor, Jim Balsillie, a pragmatic visionary who could actually get things done–and did–plus a powerhouse of genre favorite supporting actors, including Cary Elwes, Saul Rubinek, and Michael Ironside. It should have been a contender for Best Picture at the Oscars last year. It’s now streaming on Hulu.
No theatrical adaptation of a factual event is 100% accurate, but BlackBerry is close enough, and it’s surprisingly exciting–a true nailbiter. Mix the excitement and pacing of Tetris with the outside-the-box thinking in Moneyball, a dealmaker on par with The Founder, and the chutzpah from Air, and the drive to survive from Twelve O’Clock High. BlackBerry subtlely, almost shyly builds the tension as a suspense thriller dressed as a historical biopic. As much as the movie builds on the tension and angst of its realistic characters, it’s also hysterically funny at times.
The production design, sets, props, cinematography, hairstyles, clothes, music, and cars are sufficiently dated with the same calibre as in Apollo 13 and the gravity is delivered like the documentaries on Lucasfilm (like Light & Magic and Elstree 1976), Atari (like Atari: Game Over and High Score)–and every dot com start-up we all worked for in the 1990s.
Howerton is stunning, decisively portraying the complex, tiger-shark-esque role of every good (and bad) CEO of 1990s start-ups. Forget about movies like The Social Network and Steve Jobs–this is the real deal. BlackBerry is the 1990s as it really was. Cary Elwes plays a vile exec readying a hostile takeover of Research in Motion, Saul Rubinek plays an exec representing one of the initial industry investor-partners, and Michael Ironsides plays that diligent, hard-headed, end-of-career operational leader who knows how to cut through the crap. Jay Baruchel and Matt Johnson balance real-life entrepreneurs of the 1990s with a bit of a Beavis and Butt-head friendship.
The movie is based on Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry, by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff. Keep an eye out for lots of pop culture references, and appearances by familiar faces Martin Donovan and Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll.
Any fan of technology, tech history, and telecommunications, and anyone looking for a surprising suspense ride will not want to miss it. It’s a best-in-class production. BlackBerry is now streaming on Hulu.
