BlackBerry

It’s clever and backed up by enough tech-speak to give viewers a sense of the nuts and bolts of things without wandering into the weeds.

This is a movie about people whose successes and failures originate in the same places: a tragedy shot and edited like an action comedy.

The comic potential of the collision of personalities is thoroughly mined: Lazaridis the diffident visionary; Fregin the extrovert oddball; Balsillie the driven, hyperaggressive alpha male.

BlackBerry may not get the awards love "The Social Network" did, but it does turn a fascinating story into a very entertaining film.

BlackBerry is another movie where we all know the ending, but the fun is in finding out how we got there.

The contrast between Balsillie’s ruthless business mind and the awkward Lazaridis and Fregin is entertaining, and avoids the ‘difficult genius’ trope which haunts the subgenre by emphasising that BlackBerry was very much a team effort, and the individualism that followed later is part of the reason it failed.

It's full of fast-talking tech nerds and morally compromised corporate A-holes, it bites off a bit more than it can chew in telling the story of Research in Motion, but it's still a good time, reminiscent of mid-budget dramedies that have all but disappeared in recent years.

Howerton is really really good. As is, Jay B. and the dude who played Doug (the winner of all of this). I think this would have been better as a 6-7 part series as it feels a bit quick in a few moments ... the ending wraps up very fast.

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 rise and fall of this Canadian-made smartphone company in the global telecommunications marketplace. Seeing how the company was run, however, it probably shouldn’t come as any surprise why it ultimately failed – shady financial management, ego-driven unbridled greed, undisciplined employees and constant managerial scrambling to remain competitive, despite some surprisingly savvy marketing aimed at making the BlackBerry an enviable status symbol, especially among business clients. But is this kind of material really sufficiently engaging for a feature film? I sure don’t think so, especially since it’s about a company and product that ultimately flopped. It’s a cinematic exercise akin to “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight” (1971) trying to take on Silicon Valley giants. The film also gets exceedingly technical at times, making for a film that cyber nerds may find awesomely cool but that casual viewers are likely to see as tedious and confusing. And, by the picture’s second half, with the handwriting on the wall and the parade of unending snafus continuing, it’s difficult to maintain interest in how events unfold and eventually play out. To its credit, this release features some fine performances, most notably by Saul Rubinek, Michael Ironside and Independent Spirit Award nominee Glenn Howerton, as well as an excellent and often-ironic soundtrack. However, in a larger sense, “BlackBerry” also represents a somewhat disconcerting trend in movies that’s gaining traction – films based on the back stories of products and businesses. Besides this offering, 2023 also saw the release of films about sneakers (“Air”), videogame retailing (“Dumb Money”) and even snack foods (“Flamin’ Hot”). While there’s nothing inherently wrong with pictures about business and commerce, these offerings are innately little more than two-hour feature-length commercials for their wares. Indeed, are these commodities becoming our new screen idols? It calls to mind actor Paul Newman’s observation years ago about the emergence of a robot and a shark becoming our new movie icons, but, as different as they were, even they weren’t as shamelessly commercial as these new contenders are. Releases like this should indeed give us all pause to think about what kinds of movies we want to plunk down our hard-earned money to watch.

Glenn was very good. Liiiiit Jay = Method actor ? Ray william johnson ma goat. love that man. Im finna jerk it

Howerton is great but the movie comes off as a bit of an over-exaggerated bore that never seems to get interesting.

bad [ bad ] adjective, worse, worst;(Slang) bad·der, bad·dest for 36. not good in any manner or degree.