Its resident bunch of bright, awkward souls are bothered by the tasks that confront them, yet they all find joy in the bothering-in having to build an overnight prototype, say, of their beloved device, with a soldering iron if necessary. “BlackBerry” turns out to be an oddly touching portrait of a nerdocratic society. BlackBerry has ripened into a phenomenon, and its employees no longer have time to smile. (“You’re selling self-reliance,” he declares, falling back on Emersonian blah.) Somehow, as on a BlackBerry, everything clicks, and suddenly, with a series of forward leaps, we find ourselves in an atmosphere of private jets, of supergeeks being poached from the likes of Google for ten million dollars, and of Mike, now nervously suave, with his locks combed upward in a stiff quiff. En route to Bell Atlantic, Mike leaves his briefcase in a cab and hares off to retrieve it Jim, all alone, has to convince the executives of the merits of the BlackBerry, despite not understanding how it hooks up to a network. What appeals to him, I think, is the way in which striving toward triumph means, in practice, stumbling along with a mixture of haplessness and gall. Johnson is not so insolent as to sneer at commercial ambition, but unlike Affleck he doesn’t burnish his movie into a hymn of praise. What causes the fissure is, needless to say, success. When one of them does reject the other, later on, you wince at the pain of the split. Or listen to Mike, when he learns that he won’t be able to bring Doug to a meeting with Bell Atlantic: “He’s my best friend!” Cue the sight of Doug, standing forlornly at a window. Witness Jim vandalizing a phone booth in a tantrum, as if he were wrecking a dying technology in his quest for the youthfully new. This subtle strain of childishness runs through the film. “I want fifty per cent of the company, and I’ve got to be C.E.O.,” he says, sounding like a kid pretending to be an important grownup. Fired up by being fired, he arrives at Research in Motion and makes a modest proposal. What they need is a shark.Įnter Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), a balding hammerhead who has lost his previous job for not obeying orders. (Another dead name.) It is, Doug says, “a pager, a cell phone, and an e-mail machine all in one.” But he and his colleagues are computer folk, unschooled in the dark arts of peddling their big idea. He and Doug are seeking investors for their product, the PocketLink. Near the start, while Mike is nerving himself to present a pitch, he gets so annoyed by the buzzy hiss of an intercom that he can’t help taking it apart. That restlessness, though tiring to behold, works because it mimics the inquisitive energy of the characters. Much of the action, kicking off in 1996, takes place in the company offices most of it, indeed, looks like an episode of “ The Office.” The camera appears to be caffeinated, refusing to settle, darting from one worried face to the next. Has corporate nomenclature ever been more dazzlingly dull? (Summoned to a business meeting, Doug keeps his headband on even while clad in a suit.) Doug and his thirtysomething pal Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel)-whose hair is gray from the outset, as if sapped of color by the power of the adjacent brain-are the co-founders of a small Canadian outfit called Research in Motion. Not content with directing the new film, and writing it with Matthew Miller, he also stars as Doug Fregin, one of the creators of the BlackBerry, and, if the movie is to be believed, the most committed wearer of a headband since John McEnroe. It could slot into a holster on your belt, allowing you to draw it like a Colt and fire off a lethal message to that guy with the goatee in Accounts. Nonetheless, for a while, owning a BlackBerry was all the rage. A BlackBerry was a portable communication device, equipped with buttons so itty-bitty that they could not be comfortably deployed by anybody larger than Rumpelstiltskin. For those who were off-planet, or awaiting conception, at the dawn of the millennium, the title may need some explanation. Matt Johnson’s “BlackBerry” is a reminder that, in dramatic terms, rise and fall is almost always more gripping, and more morally provoking, than rise and rise. If you enjoyed Ben Affleck’s “ Air,” currently in theatres, but felt that it was too puffed up, here comes a lesson in deflation.
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