BlackBerry Review: One Of 2023s Best Movies So Far

BlackBerry tells a familiar story. The new film from Operation Avalanche director Matt Johnson is, in many ways, a classic up-and-down drama in the same vein as American epics like The Social Network and, to a lesser extent, Goodfellas . The players are familiar archetypes, and they play their roles well throughout BlackBerry 's two-hour run. Meanwhile, the film's screenplay, written by Johnson and Matthew Miller, presents the company's objectively complex story in the simplest and most straightforward way.

However, unlike The Social Network, BlackBerry is not trying to make specific statements about the current state of American society. The themes of ruthless ambition and the corrosive nature of greed are eternal and, like the other BlackBerry , are familiar to anyone who has seen this type of film. Although BlackBerry has more modest intentions than many of its spiritual predecessors, it is built with a level of confidence and precision that has made it one of the best movies of the year so far.

Spanning two decades, BlackBerry begins in the mid-1990s when two lifelong friends, Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and Doug Fragin (Johnson), decide to meet ambitious corporate shark Jim Balsil (Glenn Howerton) to learn about his business. proposal For a phone that can connect to the Internet and send and receive email. After losing his job due to his arrogance, Jim offers to help Doug and Mike market and sell their phone, provided they are named by one of the CEOs and "keys" of a Canadian tech company. The company buys Mike, who wants to advance in the world of technology, and accepts Jim's offer.

In the years that followed, Jim, Mike and Doug managed to make their device, the BlackBerry, one of the most popular and important products in the world. Along the way, Doug watches as Mike becomes more comfortable in a corporate world he previously didn't want to be involved in. Of course, its success in the late 2000s would inevitably be challenged by the rise of competitors like Apple and Android, whose devices had the potential to push BlackBerry out of the global phone market entirely.

Anyone who knows the history of BlackBerry already knows how things ended for Mike, Doug and Jim. It's fair to say that Johnson's film doesn't try to hide or surprise viewers with the BlackBerry's inevitable problems. Instead, his and Miller's script sets the stage for the company's turnaround in the third act, and it's a testament to BlackBerry 's storytelling prowess that the demise of the eponymous company feels like a consequence of the decisions its characters made. as after the changes. in the market. , it was simply out of their control.

On screen, Howerton, Johnson and Baruchel form a trio of diverse and contrasting personalities. As Balsillie, Howerton is an ever-filling bucket of rage and arrogance, making him the perfect contrast to Baruchel's confrontational yet cunning Lazaridis. Meanwhile, Johnson is proving to be the heart and soul of BlackBerry . Son Doug Freggin is a red-lined movie character who is characterized as a corporate slacker for most of the film, but later proves to be smarter than he is with the complex nature of workplace politics that he won't recognize. For his part, Johnson injects enough empathy into the character's final twist to make it believable.

In addition to its core trio, BlackBerry fields a revolving door of memorable supporting characters, including Paul Stannos (Rich Sommer) and Ritchie Cheung (SungWon Cho), a pair of accomplished engineers poached from their company by Howerton's Balsillie. : Cary Elwes chews the scenery as the arrogant boss of a rival phone company interested in acquiring BlackBerry and steals a memorable scene in the second half, while Saul Rubinek makes some important points as the spokesman for BlackBerry's biggest wireless partner. Together, these actors help enrich the otherwise bland world of corporate office and private jet movies.

Despite BlackBerry 's ambitious size and scope, editor Curt Loeb also keeps the film moving at a brisk and consistent pace from start to finish. The film moves along its story, relying on a few well-placed pins to jump between three major time periods, without ever introducing its characters and main storyline too quickly for BlackBerry to sink into confusion. In this sense, the film is more reminiscent of the 2015 "Big Short" . Both films manage to make a surprising amount of corporate jargon inaccessible, which is easier said than done.

BlackBerry 's ties to The Big Short don't end with the script. Visually, Johnson adopts the same quasi-documentary style as its Adam McKay-directed predecessor for BlackBerry . Fortunately, the film's aesthetic emphasizes its 1990s analog origins, and Johnson's fast and fluid directorial style is well-suited to BlackBerry's editorial pace and on-screen storytelling. In other words, the greatest success of the film is its artistic consistency and reliability. Ultimately, the confidence Johnson brings to BlackBerry allows it to enter the same thematic and narrative arena as some of the greatest films in American film history.

The film certainly doesn't reach the level of many classic films of its predecessor. In the third act , "BlackBerry" goes a little overboard, subjecting its characters to too many catastrophic flaws to justify their relatively soft treatment. And as compelling as the story of BlackBerry's rise and fall is, the company's demise at the hands of Apple and others ultimately doesn't matter as much as some other stories around the world. A large screen that goes up and down.

But even if the BlackBerry isn't powerful enough to be considered an instant classic, it still makes quite an impression. For its director, the film is not only a new artistic peak, but also heralds Johnson as a director who deserves more attention in the coming years. His latest film is one that, unlike its heroes, succeeds in almost everything.

BlackBerry is in theaters now.

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