'BlackBerry,' starring Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton, is a surprising docudrama about the rise and fall of the tech company. Our Berlinale review:
Everyday technology expands so fast and with such intensity that high-tech novelties tend to consume history itself. For instance, it's hard to imagine a world where Google's Android and Apple's iOS were not the leading players of the cellphone game. Still, a little more than a decade ago, BlackBerry portables were coveted by every teenager and used by businessmen as a symbol of status.
COLLIDER VIDEO OF THE DAY BlackBerry takes us back to 1996, when visionary engineer Mike Lazaridis came up with an idea to revolutionize the communication market: putting an email machine inside a cell phone. While we are all very used to our smartphones nowadays, it hasn't been long since Lazaridis granted us internet access on the go. Even so, the BlackBerry brand has become almost unknown to younger generations, making Lazaridis' story ever more tragic.
While Lazaridis had the best ideas and the will to implement them to perfection, he lacked the business spirit needed to actually sell phones. That's why he joins forces with salesman Jim Balsillie , a cutthroat capitalist who couldn't care less about the quality of Lazaridis' inventions. And so began RIM's journey to dominate the phone market in the US and the world, with Balsillie pushing for an aggressive expansion while Lazaridis tried to remain on his moral high ground.
BlackBerry's two leads are not alone in turning a corporate docudrama into a touching story, as Matt Johnson's Douglas “Doug” Fregin, Lazaridis' goofball friend, helped him create the RIM company long before Balsillie came into the picture. And for the entire duration of BlackBerry, Doug will try to keep Lazaridis grounded, pouring all his energies into making sure RIM is a company worth working for, where all kinds of nerds can feel welcomed.
There’s no question BlackBerry does a beautiful job documenting the history of RIM. Based on Jacquie McNish's book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry, Johnson's docudrama never refrains from exploring the minutia of the corporate business.
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