How can you have everything and yet lose it all? Ask Meghan Markle but it’s also the theme of Director Matt Johnson’s film ‘Blackberry’ the latest in a series of high tech, high finance films and is a frightening insight into the competitiveness and speed which technology moves. Starting in 1996 tech guys Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and his best friend Doug (Matt Johnson too) are partners in their company which they’ve unfortunately chosen to name as RIM although here it’s actually an acronym for Research In Motion. What the pair have invented and try to pitch is a phone that combines a phone, a pager and even a computer using existing technology that other companies have not been able get onto any network.
And yet no one is interested until Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), an executive who had dismissed their idea when they pitched it to him, resigns from another company in a fit of pique and gets himself a partnership with the pair. Unlike the other two he is far from flaky and in direct contrast he is a hard arsed, no nonsense bull in a china shop and his bulldozer approach to pitching the product the pair have invented pays off for them all. Utterly brutal his hard sell would not be out of place in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross and for the trio it works. It works spectacularly with Blackberry at its very peak claiming to have 45% of the mobile phone market. But like a shooting stick that Gemma Collins has sat on it all goes bent very quickly and all to an excellent era defining soundtrack.
Blackberry is an exhilarating view. Never blinding you with science and the three leads each very different person to the other are a compelling screen trio in an equally compelling true life story and a reminder that today’s titans of tech can become yesterday’s men almost overnight and Blackberry is one of the years great independent films.
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Here’s the Blackberry trailer….
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