BlackBerry - In theaters May 12, 2023

[kaw]

4.00 star(s) Rating: 4.00/5 2 Votes

Title: BlackBerry

Tagline: Work hard. Fail hard.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Director: Matt Johnson

Cast: Glenn Howerton, Michael Ironside, Jay Baruchel, Rich Sommer, Cary Elwes, Saul Rubinek, Martin Donovan, Matt Johnson, SungWon Cho, Michelle Giroux, Mark Critch, Ben Petrie, Ethan Eng

Release: 2023-05-12

Runtime: 121

Plot: Two mismatched entrepreneurs – egghead innovator Mike Lazaridis and cut-throat businessman Jim Balsillie – joined forces in an endeavour that was to become a worldwide hit in little more than a decade. The device that one of them invented and the other sold was the BlackBerry, an addictive mobile phone that changed the way the world worked, played and communicated. But just as BlackBerry was rising to new peaks, it also started losing its way through the fog of Smartphone wars, management indecision and outside distractions, eventually leading to the breakdown of one of the most successful ventures in the history of the tech and business worlds.

 

[kaw]

 

[Lenny Nero]

Another 'true story' I've watched right after Dumb Money, only this one less recent, but begins in 1996, my first teenage years, so all the references to those times in the movie were awesome, like C&C game. I loved the whole film, but the first third was the best. Credits at the end have the biggest, longest list of all the titles, games, movies, posters and t-shirts of other properties used/featured in the movie.
I personally never used or owned a Blackberry or Apple phone. Went from Nokia 'bricks' to first Palm-like touch-screen phones from Samsung in 2001 (SPH-i300 model featured in the first season of "24")

Spoiler

[so I had an 'all-screen' phone 6 years before everyone went nuts about it for some reason, thus never understood the hype]
...to Motorola Razr V3 and various Samsung and Sony clamshells and sliders, through the whole Samsung lineup, beginning with a Galaxy model that didn't even have an 'S' attached to it, but did have a dozen physical buttons besides a touch-screen, up to S20 Ultra and back to now Chinese owned Motorola Razr foldable. But I heard and read about some of the portrayed events, and the movie is so well paced, that I didn't notice how its 2 hours flew buy, and that is the biggest compliment one can give.
Basically if you lived through those times, love phones and corporate dramas, you're guaranteed to like this film.