BlackBerry

Some great movies understand their characters and story so well they can get the job done with speed and joy. 

Blackberry never takes a breath, moving from one crisis to the next and then to the end like an express train trying to make up time. But it’s a movie that understands what it wants to do, hits the target, and then bows out perfectly. 

Sometimes it is a very good sign when your director is also one of the screenwriters. This feels like a script where everything, from the opening moments to the final seconds was both well thought out and carefully considered. 

It’s also a movie and a script that killed all the distractions and blind alleys that can bog down a story. 

For instance, the main characters are always at work, they are always moving from one challenge to the next and the elements of the downfall of Research in Motion are seeded in the opening moments. 

We never see any wives, girlfriends or anything close to a personal conflict for the entire flick.

Instead, we get the spectacular Glenn Howerton, of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, playing corporate rage monster, Jim Basillie. The Harvard educated (just ask him!) executive spotted a way to the top by hitching himself to an engineer who was about to invent the future of cell phones. 

Jay Baruchel plays the meek man, Mike Lazaridus, who had the talent but maybe not the ambition or the cunning to turn RIM into the corporate behemoth that created the Blackberry. 

Writer/Director Matt Johnson plays the goofy best friend who tried to protect Baruchel and stand up and speak for him even years after he should know Baruchel doesn’t need the help. 

So this is a classic case of watching a scrappy company come together, overcome obstacles and rise to the top of the corporate heap. And then, spoilers, flame out.

Again, it’s hard to explain just how good this movie is at showing how the characters have changed or stayed the same over time. You know everything you need to about Lazaridus in the latter days by seeing his new hairstyle. And the movie is smart enough not to gild the lily. 

No one ever says, “you’ve changed man,” but we know it. 

What’s especially fun though, is watching this group of guys who thought they were killers react to the asteroid that was the iPhone. 

Laziridus has nothing but denial and hubris. I loved watching him fume to Verizon about being the guy who invented the whole category and that he knows what’s best. 

Basillie is already checked out, trying to maneuver a deal with the National Hockey League, and the movie gives you a choice in a private plane that shows just how distracted the Co-CEO was. 

It’s rare that something comes along that just kills everyone else in the product category. But the iPhone was to computer and phone and camera salesman what the automobile was to horseman. The end of all things. 

The screenplay suggests that in the beginning Laziridus was the kind of engineer who would never accept crummy work. He was actually offended by the phrase ‘good enough.’

In its last days, BlackBerry’s mantra among the engineers was, ‘good enough, let’s ship this.’ The movie even calls back an issue from the opening scene to show just how far the company fell.

The secret of movies like these is not whether or not they are true (a movie can’t compress the complexities of any true story much less a true story that takes place over a decade) but whether it feels true. 

Despite a few scenes with Basille late in the flick that I didn’t buy the rest of this felt like the gospel. 

From The Creation to Armageddon.