Canada Media Fund | Fonds des médias du Canada
IPR.VC
Rhombus Media
XYZ Films
Zapruder Films
Not part of a collection.
BlackBerry
Work hard. Fail hard.
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 story of the meteoric rise and catastrophic demise of the world's first smartphone.
- Original title
- BlackBerry
- Language
- EN
- Country
- CA
- Budget
- $5,000,000
- Revenue
- $2,600,000
r96sk
May 22, 2024 · via TMDB
Thoroughly fascinating to watch this unfold. <em>'BlackBerry'</em> reminded me a lot of fellow 2023 flick <em>'Air'</em>, two movies that were in fact released within months of each other interestingly. Both are great watches, with this being one I particularly enjoyed. It's super well put together. The two hours go by fast, the story is presented in such a way that there wasn't a single moment I was even the slightest bit uninterested - there's a great flow to proceedings. Jay Baruchel is excellent throughout, so is Glenn Howerton. The whole cast do good work, amusing to see SungWon Cho (aka ProZD) appear too! I remember BlackBerry being huge at my high school back in the day, though based on the timeline shown in this movie it was very much during the company's spiral - guess our parents couldn't afford iPhones at that point!😂 I am still yet to own an iPhone mind you, guess I'm in the severe minority with that one. I did own a Blackberry though and I'm with Lazaridis: keyboard >>> touchscreen, all day! Same goes for buttons >>> sensors for TVs, while we're here. I'm stuck in the dark ages, I know I know. Tangent over, this is a quality film!
rsanek
Mar 27, 2024 · via TMDB
The downfall part is a bit sudden as compared to the first 2/3 of the film, but still a very fun watch.
Brent Marchant
Feb 22, 2024 · via TMDB
With the release of such innovative communications products as the Apple and Android smartphones, questions began to circulate about the future viability of onetime market leader BlackBerry, a line of devices that subsequently went into rapid decline. Ironically, that real-life business world narrative itself raises comparable questions about the viability of a movie that tells the BlackBerry story. Nevertheless, writer-director Matt Johnson’s third feature outing brings the ill-fated account of the rise and fall of this Canadian-made smartphone company in the global telecommunications marketplace. Seeing how the company was run, however, it probably shouldn’t come as any surprise why it ultimately failed – shady financial management, ego-driven unbridled greed, undisciplined employees and constant managerial scrambling to remain competitive, despite some surprisingly savvy marketing aimed at making the BlackBerry an enviable status symbol, especially among business clients. But is this kind of material really sufficiently engaging for a feature film? I sure don’t think so, especially since it’s about a company and product that ultimately flopped. It’s a cinematic exercise akin to “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight” (1971) trying to take on Silicon Valley giants. The film also gets exceedingly technical at times, making for a film that cyber nerds may find awesomely cool but that casual viewers are likely to see as tedious and confusing. And, by the picture’s second half, with the handwriting on the wall and the parade of unending snafus continuing, it’s difficult to maintain interest in how events unfold and eventually play out. To its credit, this release features some fine performances, most notably by Saul Rubinek, Michael Ironside and Independent Spirit Award nominee Glenn Howerton, as well as an excellent and often-ironic soundtrack. However, in a larger sense, “BlackBerry” also represents a somewhat disconcerting trend in movies that’s gaining traction – films based on the back stories of products and businesses. Besides this offering, 2023 also saw the release of films about sneakers (“Air”), videogame retailing (“Dumb Money”) and even snack foods (“Flamin’ Hot”). While there’s nothing inherently wrong with pictures about business and commerce, these offerings are innately little more than two-hour feature-length commercials for their wares. Indeed, are these commodities becoming our new screen idols? It calls to mind actor Paul Newman’s observation years ago about the emergence of a robot and a shark becoming our new movie icons, but, as different as they were, even they weren’t as shamelessly commercial as these new contenders are. Releases like this should indeed give us all pause to think about what kinds of movies we want to plunk down our hard-earned money to watch.
badelf
Feb 18, 2024 · via TMDB
In one sense, this is a comedic action film. In another sense, it's a biopic of a lying, cheating, ruthless, tech businessman of a slightly less rank than Bezos, Zuckerberg and the "Don't be Evil" Page/Brin team. Overall, it's brilliantly cast and paced. It moves along at the perfect clip for this kind of action film. I was interested in the technology, but that truly wasn't the story.
MarciaClarke
Jan 5, 2024 · via TMDB
I kept hearing people say this movie was actually not bad for a movie about BalckBerry, and you know what, they were right! Glenn Howerton plays an incredibly entertaining psycho as always. Jay Baruchel does the befuddled muppet thing with aplomb. And then the doofus sidekick guy who's actually more insightful than others give him credit for also does a good job. It's an easy mindless entertainment watch. Spoiler alert, the company does really well then it doesn't.
kisaligol
Jan 1, 2024 · via TMDB
The script seems to be written mostly from the perspective of Jim Balsillie, a businessman that was co-CEO of Blackberry, while engineers take a backseat. This follows the general tendency in film to glorify businessmen, treating the people who actually conceptualize, design and implement the products (i.e., do the core work that is societally useful) as mere sidekicks. The general timeline is right and many of the major events in the history of Blackberry are there, but none are described in enough detail for viewers to appreciate the engineering successes that led to Blackberry rising to global prominence, nor the business mismanagement that tanked it. The engineering details that made it in are often confused or misleading (e.g., Blackberry did not invent push messaging, and their prototype wasn't pulled from thin air overnight). It gives the impression most of the source material came from interviews with non-technical people, or else "Great Man" personality drama was the only material the filmmakers understood well enough to put in a script. The film has confusingly mixed messaging. It perpetuates the notion that engineers are tinkering children that get nothing done without big daddy managers pushing them to work long hours and "just make it work", damn the technical details! Yet it repeatedly also tries to show the businessmen as hustlers that use bluster and hand waving to cover up their general uselessness and technical incompetence, as well as the resulting harmful decisions they make that ultimately resulted in the downfall of Blackberry. Perhaps the writers wanted to portray Balsillie as a clever shark, but based on his actions in the film alone you would think he was largely a egomaniacal leech that the meek engineers could not figure out how to get rid of. Indeed it is unclear why the engineers brought him on to begin with - they probably would have been better off without him and the other businessmen he brought on.
User reviews courtesy of TMDB.
Amazon Video
Apple TV Store
Google Play Movies
YouTube
Fandango At Home
Netflix
Philo
AMC Plus Apple TV channel
AMC+ Roku Premium Channel
AMC+
YouTube TV
Sundance Now
Netflix Standard with Ads
Amazon Video
Apple TV Store
Google Play Movies
YouTube
Fandango At Home
Jay Baruchel
Mike
Glenn Howerton
Jim
Matt Johnson
Doug
Saul Rubinek
John Woodman
Cary Elwes
Carl Yankowski
Rich Sommer
Paul Stanos
Michael Ironside
Charles Purdy
Martin Donovan
Rick Brock
Michelle Giroux
Dara Frankel
SungWon Cho
Ritchie
Mark Critch
Gary Bettman
Kelly Van der Burg
Jasmine
Gregory Ambrose Calderone
Young Businessman #1
Laura Cilevitz
Shelly
Ethan Eng
Ethan
Michael Scott
Michael
Steve Hamelin
Steve
Ben Petrie
Allan
Jinny Wong
Bank Manager
Lauren Howe
Bell Assistant
Stephanie Moran
Peggy
Dillon Casey
Mark Guibert
Eric Osborne
Austin
Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll
Jack Manishen
Elena Juatco
Dawn
David Christo
Pilot
Sean Jones
Small SEC Investor
Evan Buliung
Stan Sigman (voice)
Adam Belanger
Production Design
Rebecca Fadoju
Set Dresser
Luca Tarantini
Assistant Camera
Jared Raab
Camera Operator
Jared Raab
Director of Photography
Natalie Dale
Hairstylist
Natalie Dale
Makeup Artist
Matt Johnson
Director
Matt Greyson
First Assistant Director
Curt Lobb
Editor
Aram Tertzakian
Executive Producer
Hazel Clarre
Executive Producer
Jay McCarrol
Executive Producer
Noah Segal
Executive Producer
Kevin Krikst
Producer
Matthew Miller
Producer
Niv Fichman
Producer
Jay McCarrol
Original Music Composer
Bret Killoran
Sound Re-Recording Mixer
Matthew Chan
Sound Re-Recording Mixer
Matthew Chan
Supervising Sound Editor
Jay McCarrol
Story Editor
Matt Johnson
Writer
Matthew Miller
Writer
Saudade
Malcolm X, la justice quel qu'en soit le prix
Once Upon a Time in America
Dead Poets Society
Keep Up the Good Work
Apocalypse Now
Das Boot
The Elephant Man
The Wages of Fear
American Beauty
Za ranních červánků
Atatürk, Father of Modern Turkey
Braveheart
Amélie
Rebecca
Anatomy of a Murder
All Quiet on the Western Front
Viridiana
Always - Sunset on Third Street
Boxed
Brazil
Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992
Manon of the Spring
The Longest Day
Let the Right One In
Serpico
South Park: Joining the Panderverse
Walk the Line
The Name of the Rose
Miramar
Bis dass das Geld euch scheidet…
Eyes Wide Shut
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
Man on Fire
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Legends of the Fall
Jackie Brown
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Komang
Bloody Sunday
Thank You for Smoking
Clueless
8 Mile
Lorenzo's Oil
Father Stu
Seabiscuit
Raising Arizona
Orphan of Lowood
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
Samson
The Lake in the Sky
Orlando
Sam Bahadur
The Glass Cell
Evil Under the Sun
Friday Night Lights
Hard Miles
Election
Oliver Twist
The Tiger Gang
Sand Dollar Cove
Nineteen Eighty-Four
The Bone Collector
Chopper
The Silent Ocean
About a Boy
The Return of Martin Guerre
Bully
The Harmonists
Not Without My Daughter
Ennio Doris - C'è anche domani
Jarhead
Candyman
Absolute Power
Clear and Present Danger
The Children of Huang Shi
The Bricklayers
It Feels So Good
Lucicreide Goes to Mars
Kiss the Girls
1984
Private Parts
My Name Is Shadow
Flora & Ulysses
Help Me I'm Dying
The Uninvited Guest
The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case
The Cabbage Soup
Fonissa
The Man Who Knew Too Little
Smilla's Sense of Snow
Have You Ever Seen Fireflies?
Arn: The Knight Templar
Sleepless
How to Be Single
Train Man
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny
Theophilos
Ali G Indahouse
Sin
Uzavřený pavilon
The Legend of Juan Jose Mundo
Apple Mortgage Cake
Tierra del fuego
Milka: A Film About Taboos
The Heartbreak Kid
The Nutty Professor
The Bonfire of the Vanities
The Nameless
Ask Me Anything
Freejack
Francisco Brennand
Rembrandt
Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
Ask the Dust
A Room with a View
Needle in a Timestack
The Tenth Level
The Stranger in My Home
No Other Love
The Creep Behind the Camera
Jarrapellejos
The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky
Beatriz
Kaivopuiston kaunis Regina
Achena Uttam
The Daughter of the Pope: Lucrezia Borgia
Father Sergius
Půlpenny
Never Turn Your Back On Sparks
Siri
The Invisible Life of Addie Larue
Human Blood Is Thicker than Water
Andersonvillský proces
Otcové a děti
Jedna žena navyše
Modigliani - Il principe
Gino: A Child of War
Strong Hearts Have Scars
The Landlord
Cizinci v domě
Morning Become Electric
Cucaracha
Last Night in Montreal
They'll Be Calling
A Man Called Otto
Ed Wood
My Dinner with Andre
Richard Jewell
The Right Stuff
Adaptation.
Air
Quiz Show
Lady Bird
Man on the Moon
Moxie
She Said
Eighth Grade
The Disaster Artist
Shattered Glass
Game Change
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
Elvis
A Call to Spy
One Chance
Jakob the Liar
Back to Black
Queen of the Ring
The Last Word
Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend
Don't Think Twice
Paper Man
The Hoax
Jobs
The Cable Guy
Mar 13, 2023
South by Southwest Film & TV Festival
Apr 14, 2023
Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival
Apr 15, 2023
PFF SpringFest
Apr 16, 2023
RiverRun International Film Festival
Apr 17, 2023
San Francisco International Film Festival
Apr 21, 2023
Florida Film Festival
Apr 24, 2023
Seattle International Film Festival
Apr 27, 2023
San Luis Obispo Film Festival
May 12, 2023
Jun 2, 2023
