It's easy to take “BlackBerry” at face value as nothing more than a standard corporate-origin docu-drama that tries to capitalize on whatever nostalgia audiences may have left for their old phones. But this film reaches for something greater. It aims to say something about the current state of the global economy. Specifically, the film works extraordinarily well as a warning about the trajectory of the film industry.
The new movie from Canadian filmmaker Matt Johnson rises above its subgenre by not looking at this story with much fondness. It skews far closer to “The Social Network” than it does “Air,” and the film is better for it. Yes, it can find admiration and joy in the engineers working tirelessly to create this innovative new product, but the film is far more cynical about this story.
“BlackBerry” warns of the perils of chasing infinite growth. The engineers at Research in Motion create something truly innovative in their BlackBerry cellphone — co-CEO Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) defensively claims as much when Verizon demands something similar to the iPhone near the end of the film. But the businessman, Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), a man that comes in and only cares about selling the product and generating as much profit as possible, doesn’t understand the industry he’s getting into enough to create a feasible and sustainable company. His ego takes over and he disregards the advice of the people that actually know what he is selling, and the inflated ego that comes with vast wealth and power infects Lazaridis too. The person least influenced by their own ego, Douglas Fregin (Johnson), is the one who is able to get out of their own way and leaves when it becomes apparent that RIM can’t grow any further. He ends up the most successful of the bunch, despite being the one who cares the least about money.
This could be read as a warning to those currently in control of the future of the film industry. The tech giants and corporate businessmen who run the largest production and distribution studios in the world seem to only be interested in constantly growing their companies. To them, it’s all about getting more subscribers, generating more content, and milking every dollar out of every property they own. Long gone are the producers who actually care about this medium as an art form. Now, this industry is run by people who fundamentally misunderstand it. And just as it happens with Balsillie and RIM, they will suck the film industry dry, kill it, and then move on to something else with their pockets lined with cash. The people that will be left behind are those that made the industry valuable to begin with — the artists and craftsmen that created what people wanted in the first place.
Even if you were to look at "BlackBerry" through a surface-level lens, the film still works incredibly well. The performances are excellent, particularly Baruchel, whose transformation from meek tech nerd to careless, ruthless businessman feels natural and true to the character’s core, and Howerton, whose fiery, terrifying performance creates a character that is such a dislikeable scumbag that it immediately endears the audience to the team of engineers. The direction is assured, with Johnson creating controlled chaos with his handheld, “Succession”-esque visual style that adds a feeling of anxiety throughout the film. But the best element here is the script, which is tight, rapidly paced, and bitingly hilarious, all combining to give the film an intense energy that never drops throughout the runtime.
Though not a high bar, “BlackBerry” is the best movie of 2023 so far. In a year that seems like it could be dominated by these sponsored content movies — like “Air,” “Tetris,” and “Flamin’ Hot” — “BlackBerry” feels like it could be the only one that actually wants to interrogate its subject. It shows that you can still admire a product while taking a very critical look at the way it was produced, and it shows that these stories can be used for more than cheap nostalgia-bait for a bygone era. These stories can act as warnings for our future, as long as we are willing to listen.
