Thomas Butt is a senior writer at Collider who focuses on classic movies.
KPop Demon Hunters, the summer's surprise hit, might be the film to convince Netflix to invest in theatrical distribution. Along with the music charts, the movie, about a K-pop group moonlighting as demon hunters, is a true sensation and a testament to the growing appreciation for foreign cinema and culture in the United States—a trend that Netflix has helped cultivate.
Co-directed by Chris Appelhans and Maggie Kang, KPop Demon Hunters primarily features a cast of Korean voice actors unknown to Western audiences, with a few familiar names like Ken Jeong and Daniel Dae Kim. One of its stars, SungWon Cho, broke onto the scene as a YouTuber and can be found lending his voice work to anime and video games. As a screen actor, Cho's debut, BlackBerry, is a film that the most seasoned actors would pray to be a part of, an overlooked 2023 dramedy/biopic that will endure. ‘BlackBerry’ Chronicles the Failure of an Iconic Cell Phone Two years before providing three voices in KPop Demon Hunters, SungWon Cho was one of the many aspiring programmers for a tech startup that changed the world with their new cellphone, the BlackBerry, until they became completely irrelevant. Directed by Matt Johnson, the Canadian actor and filmmaker behind The Dirties and the mockumentary series Nirvana the Band the Show, BlackBerry is a dramatized account of the titular mobile phone through the eyes of its co-founders, Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin , along with their primary investor, Jim Balsillie . So, how did BlackBerry go from owning 45% of the mobile phone market to 0% in just over a decade? This question is an enticing prompt for a film in an era where company/product origin stories are booming in film and television. However, Johnson's tragicomedy should not be lumped in with the likes of Air, Flamin' Hot, and Tetris, as this is anything but a hagiography of its subject and product. For one, BlackBerry, following its early prosperity, was a failure, which makes for a more engrossing and poignant story than one about Nike becoming a billion-dollar enterprise after signing Michael Jordan. More than any film, The Social Network looms large over BlackBerry, but if anything, the movie is perhaps the anti-Social Network in its narrative arc. Where David Fincher's film about the founding of Facebook tracks an embittered undergrad stumbling into a digital empire, the programmers in BlackBerry have noble intentions before being poisoned by venture capitalists. While Facebook soared to the sky and never looked back, BlackBerry petered out once heavy-hitters like Steve Jobs stole its market share. Lazardis, Fregin, and Balsillie are not entirely likable—tech bros and investors have an innate unscrupulousness—but compared to their mammoth competitors that improve on their product, they are the archetypal movie underdogs. ‘BlackBerry’ Reflects on Our Current Relationship With Technology and Capitalism BlackBerry's tone is an amalgamation of the distinct tonal trends in movies and television that speak to the unstable and anxious times. The Big Short is another obvious textual influence, with Adam McKay's politically charged docu-dramedy chronicling how we've reached this point of economic crisis, but the nervousness of the financial analysts shares a kinship with the BlackBerry employees who are in over their heads. Combined with the awkwardness of any Nathan Fielder project and the manic sadness of The Bear, BlackBerry is the tech biopic for the disillusioned. Imbued with Matt Johnson's quirky charm, the film carries the register of a Shakespearean tragedy that these cautionary tales about powerful moguls and entrepreneurs require in the 2020s. Johnson tapped into the unique phenomenon of the BlackBerry and its place in culture and modern history. For a while, they were synonymous with cell phones entirely, taking the world by storm so thoroughly that their addictive quality lent them the nickname"CrackBerry." Now, if they're not a punchline, they have been completely forgotten. It would've been easy for Johnson to celebrate these lovable has-beens in history as noble start-ups ahead of their time, but their greed and paranoia, which led to their sudden collapse, predicted the trends of their successors that we all live with today. As soon as cutthroat and ingenious programmers and executives emerged, they craved influence beyond the screen of a mobile phone. BlackBerry could be read as the origin story for our contemporary social, political, and economic landscape run by people just a little smarter and more tactical than the figures in Matt Johnson's film that will stand the test of time. It doesn't necessarily pay homage to the discontinued phone brand, but it looks upon it nostalgically as a vestige of a better kind of ravenous capitalism. Your Rating close 10 stars 9 stars 8 stars 7 stars 6 stars 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star Rate Now 0/10 Your comment has not been saved Like BlackBerry Not Yet Rated Biography Comedy Drama 9 10 Release Date April 28, 2023 Runtime 121 minutes Director Matt Johnson Writers Matt Johnson, Jacquie McNish, Sean Silcoff Cast See All The story of the meteoric rise and catastrophic demise of the world's first smartphone.
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