Like The Social Network, which was less about Facebook and more about personalities, handheld devices with physical keyboards are almost ancillary to BlackBerry. In the hands of director Matt Johnson, who also co-stars in the film, we learn about the lead characters by how they approach work and think of each other. What buoys the film is its nerd-centric sense of humor, and performances that are more complex than they initially seem. BlackBerry devices are completely inconsequential now, but for a while some weirdos were not wrong to think they could become the world’s most significant tech company, and so an important undercurrent is how the thrust of history can turn industry leaders into a footnote overnight. Maybe they hate Steve Jobs in their bones.
In the mid-1990s, when the tech boom was on the verge of exploding, a group of engineers in a glorified garage could still make a difference. Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and Douglas Fregin (Matt Johnson) are trying to look for investors for their idea – a handheld device that combines a phone, text, and email – but the trouble is they have no business savvy. Still, they manage to get in the door with Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), a hotheaded executive who – after getting fired off-camera – strong-arms Mike and Doug to being the co-CEO for their company. These opening passages rely heavily on period details to add verisimilitude: Jim is mostly hostile to tech, while Mike is the kind of nerd cheerleader who leads “Doom” LAN parties to help engineers blow off steam (the soundtrack is also great, with an early needle drop of “Connection” by Elastica establishing a sense of mood).
It is inevitable that BlackBerry gets significant investment, dominating the handheld device market until the iPhone debut in 2007. There are obligatory montages and personality shifts, such as Mike becoming a competent, confident business tech executive. But the obligatory “rise/fall” arc does not have much interest to Johnson, who would rather understand what makes his leads tick. In a Q&A for the film, Johnson explained that Doug, Mike, and Jim are all extensions of his own personalities, and the film’s tragedy is how none of the three ever realize they need each other. Indeed, the best scenes involve the characters talking past their needs, like when Doug attempts to assert his tech prowess, or Jim attempts to throttle an accelerated prototype development through sheer force of will. By the time we get to the poignant final scenes, what is more intriguing than any plot detail is how the characters learn from each other – albeit once it is too late.
At first, Baruchel and Johnson seem like awkward goofballs, the sort who want to succeed, but lack the ability to maintain eye contact to get there. Johnson has impeccable comic timing, using his wide-eyed innocence to show how his character is unserious, a kind of humility that few directors would consider for their own film (it is interesting to consider how BlackBerry contrasts to Air, since they have similar ambition and narrative thrust). Baruchel is a bit more impenetrable, a kind of idealistic engineer who would rather fail than compromise his vision, at least until he has a board and shareholders to worry about. In the first couple acts, Johnson and his co-screenwriter Matthew Miller create a “geeks vs. jocks” vibe, only to augment it as BlackBerry grows: Mike and Doug compromise their integrity, while Jim grows more comfortable in the tech space, which is to say he attempts to dominate it more aggressively.
Howerton makes a strong impression as Jim, in what might end up being one of the year’s great supporting performances. He takes the simmering disgust and anger that helped him define Dennis Reynolds, his character on “It’s Always in Philadelphia,” and makes it more frightening because BlackBerry denies him the comforting structure of a sit-com. Longtime “Sunny” fans will recognize when Howerton goes “full Dennis,” and those unfamiliar with the show may be startled by a comic actor who famously developed dramatic chops at Juilliard. By the time Jim cannot help but excoriate people well beyond his reach in the business world, Howerton finds notes of rage and pity in the same scene.
Matt Johnson and Jay Baruchel are proud Canadians, and their homeland is an important part of the film’s overall aesthetic. Unlike the sunny Silicon Valley coastal area, suburban Ontario looks gray and bland, so the characters similarly have little fashion sense. Canadian accents are also abound, with stalwart Canadian character actors like Michael Ironside laying on the “aboots” especially thick. Their goal is not exactly to suggest Ontario deserves to be in the same breadth as other major tech hubs, and instead evoke the democratic quality that informs the tech industry at its most pure. Anyone like Mike, with the right technical knowhow and a good idea, might just make it, at long as they have someone like Jim to push them hard, and someone else like Doug who understands that units sold are not everything. No doubt BlackBerry takes significant liberties with the company’s story, and in Johnson’s hands, that is immaterial. It is too concerned with allegory to care about history all that much.
Photo courtesy of IFC Films
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