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“BlackBerry” is a MoneyBro movie par excellence, right up there with “ Wall Street ,” “ Glengarry Glen Ross ,” “ Boiler Room ,” and “ The Wolf of Wall Street .” It shares their key, defining trait: even though its main characters are either charismatic sociopaths or sheep, and the capitalist system they operate in is deeply corrupt and rewards men without morals or conscience, the story is so excitingly told, the performances so watchable, and the dialogue so quotable that it becomes the verbal equivalent of an action flick—kinetic, suspenseful, and sometimes unexpectedly beautiful and weirdly moving. Instead of shooting, stabbing, or beating each other, or chasing each other in vehicles, characters in MoneyBro cinema insult each other, construct elaborate traps that play on insider knowledge or exploit an opponent’s weaknesses and pathologies, score vindicating promotions and huge paydays, and try to see how long they can keep a streak going before someone slaps handcuffs on them. I’ve seen colleagues insist that “BlackBerry” should be shown in business school classes as a cautionary tale, but it’s easier to imagine a group of young guys in ties putting it on after a long night of carousing and reciting the dialogue together until they pass out. It’s one of the coolest portrayals of losers doomed to be historical footnotes that you’ll ever see, with a needle-drop soundtrack so cannily chosen that every song on it will probably be used in a commercial for a Fortune 500 company within the next two years.

Directed and co-starring Matt Johnson and inspired by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff ’s business history,  Losing the Signal , “BlackBerry” is shot in a raggedy, trembling handheld style that suggests what an episode of “The Office” guest-scripted by David Mamet might have felt like. The most fascinating thing about the script, co-written by Johnson and Matthew Miller , is its structure. It shows us the beginning and end of this story but nothing else. The ellipsis in the middle gives the film a more intriguing energy than it would have had than if it had followed the standard playbook of meticulously tracking the rise and fall of a product and its makers. Imagine watching only the first and last episodes of an excellent TV drama—or the MoneyBro equivalent of “ Full Metal Jacket ,” the only war film that shows naive recruits being trained/brainwashed at the beginning of the process and their cynical, hardened-by-war, final incarnations, but skips the middle part showing how the change happened. 

The BlackBerry, of course, was the handheld device that the iPhone and its imitators wiped out of the marketplace. Part one of the movie shows how Mike Lazaridis ( Jay Baruchel ) and his partner Douglas Fregin (Johnson) created the BlackBerry and figured out how to let huge numbers of them operate on the same cellular network without crashing the system, then watched as its popularity spread, putting them on the verge of becoming tech icons in the mold of Steve Jobs . 

Like many creative geniuses, Mike and Doug lack the ruthlessness and nuts-and-bolts knowledge they need to survive and thrive in a capitalist system. They’re nerds habitually bullied by their clients, including one who owes them millions for products they already shipped and has been stringing them along for months. Enter Jim Ballsillie ( Glenn Howerton ), a domineering executive and hockey buff who feels unappreciated at his current job. He senses that the duo is on the verge of something big and offers to make their problems disappear and grow the company if they make him CEO. Doug sizes Jim up as a “shark” and is justifiably terrified of him. But Mike, who stammers and cringes his way through any call asking for money, makes Jim “co-CEO.” He thinks there’s value in hiring someone who can strike fear in the heart of anyone who might try to take advantage of them, and knows how to sense when an important moment is imminent and seize it. “You know who’s afraid of sharks? Pirates,” Mike says.

The movie sprints through the company’s rise, compressing a lot of the story into lively montages shot in the style of a Steven Soderbergh heist film (or business procedural like his “ High Flying Bird ” or “The Informant!”), often leaning into the innate ridiculousness of a scenario. (When Jim orders everyone at the company to become “male models” and be seen in public using BlackBerries no matter what activity they’re engaged in, the film cuts to a man playing tennis one-handed while using his free hand to hold a device.) There’s suspense that centers on whether the exponential increase in BlackBerry sales will overload their wireless carrier’s system and render their product unusable; the solution is ingenious. 

There’s an implied breakpoint around the middle of the movie, and then we pick up in the mid-aughts when BlackBerry is about to get memory-holed by the same era that it did so much to define. This all plays out in a way that evokes Heraclitus’s belief that character is destiny. There are no surprises, really, in how everything goes. All the key players in the story behave more or less as they behaved when we met them, but the circumstances are different, and they’ve gotten complacent and myopic and are reluctant to bend and change.

“BlackBerry” pays close attention to the details of what happened and explains important moments without being pedantic. At the same time, it treats the characters and events as elements in an art object. It’s fun to re-watch and study in hopes of noticing subtle details that escaped one’s attention the first time and draw connections between the halves. In one of Mike’s earliest personality-defining scenes, Jim tries to push him into throwing together a prototype in less time than he thinks he needs to do it properly, and Mike pushes back. Later in the film, he gives in, with terrible results. Similarly, Jim’s macho, improvisational, blustery, “If I can dream it, I can make it happen” energy that powers the company’s early success blows up in his face later. Even his fascination with hockey becomes an element in the company’s fall. 

It might be instructive to superimpose the first and second parts of the film over each other to see if certain scenes map perfectly over other scenes. I suspect it would all fit as snugly as the key setpieces in the first and second “ Star Wars ” trilogies, which are also about how the seeds of a person’s triumph or downfall are planted early in the story of their life. Many of this film's adults seem like overgrown children more often than not. Mike loves the click-click sound of the BlackBerry’s buttons so much that when the innovation of the screen-only iPhone threatens to eradicate the product, his brain has a brown-out, and when it comes back online, he’s malfunctioning. All he can do is deny the obvious.

Baruchel rose to fame playing a smart, sensitive, easily flustered teenager on TV’s “Undeclared”—what a deep bench of storytellers the Judd Apatow / Paul Feig factory produced!—and he channels some of that performance here, too, even though he’s 41 now and has dyed his hair silver to match the real Mike. He and Johnson are believable as men who have known each other a long time but have only limited influence over each other’s major decisions, especially the bad ones. 

Howerton assures himself a spot on any future list of classic scene-stealing jerks: with his shaved-bald head, narrowed eyes, and pouty lips, he’s the greatest supporting character that the young Bruce Willis never got to play. All three actors capture a quality that defined the ‘90s and aughts in both technology and finance—a self-flattering need to affect some “warrior spirit” and revel in the spectacle of destroying one’s enemies financially and virtually as if a village had been sacked and burned rather than a signature added to a document. As in satires like “ American Psycho ,” the behavior is appallingly funny, and funny because it’s appalling. This movie is about people whose successes and failures originate in the same place: a tragedy shot and edited like an action comedy.

In theaters now.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film credits.

BlackBerry (2023)

Rated R for language throughout.

121 minutes

Jay Baruchel as Mike Lazaridis

Glenn Howerton as Jim Balsillie

Matt Johnson as Doug

Michael Ironside as Purdy

Rich Sommer as Paul

Cary Elwes as Yankowski

Saul Rubinek as Woodman

Martin Donovan

SungWon Cho as Ritchie

Michelle Giroux as Dara

Mark Critch as Bettman

Ben Petrie as Allan

Ethan Eng as Ethan

• Matt Johnson

Writer (based on the book by)

• Jacquie McNish
• Sean Silcoff
• Matthew Miller

Cinematographer

• Jay McCarrol

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John Semley

BlackBerry Is a Movie That Portrays Tech Dreams Honestly—Finally

It’s quaint, looking back on it now, but in the decade before  iPhones ,  Androids , and  Samsung Galaxies ,  BlackBerry was  the smartphone. It was dubbed the “CrackBerry,” because of the seemingly addictive hold the sleek gizmo, with its satisfyingly clicky keyboard buttons, had on the market. Kim Kardashian was glued to hers. Barack Obama ran the free world from his. And its famously secure messaging client helped international drug rings conduct businesses across the globe.

Now, it’s a relic. An also-ran. Or, as one character puts it in  BlackBerry , a new movie about the early smartphone empire’s rise and fall, it’s merely “the thing people used before they used the iPhone.” But as this fresh, thoughtful comedy makes plain, BlackBerry is more than just a bleak cautionary tale. It’s a story of how tech culture, as we know it today, took root, bloomed, and died on the vine.

The movie opens with a telling title card: “The following fictionalization is inspired by real people and real events that took place in Waterloo, Ontario.” Matt Johnson, the film’s director and cowriter, shrugs it off as “a prefix designed by our lawyers.” But beyond ensuring artistic license, it also situates the film, squarely, in a sleepy town about an hour and half from Toronto. 

Before the super successful BlackBerry and its parent company, Research in Motion, revamped the region as an aspiring tech hub, Waterloo and its environs were better known for their lively farmer’s market culture and Mennonites in horse-drawn buggies.

What  BlackBerry  captures is the period that disrupted that, a short-lived  rumpsringa  in the late '90s and early aughts when the future of tech and telecommunications felt truly global. It was a period when  anywhere  could be the next Silicon Valley. In this sense, the titular gadget—which promised palm-of-your-hand connectivity across the globe—is, quite literally, a structuring device.

Loosely based on the 2016 book  Losing the Signal ,  BlackBerry  seems at first blush like a familiar,  Social Network -style drama of a company’s explosive rise. Nebbish engineer Mike Lazaridis ( This Is the End ’s Jay Baruchel) teams up with Jim Balsillie ( It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia ’s Glenn Howerton), a menacing Harvard MBA. It’s a marriage of mutual convenience, undergirded by a more Faustian logic.

With Lazaridis’ ability to exploit existing wireless infrastructure, and Balsillie’s command of boardroom politics, the pair invent, and cannily market, the modern smartphone. In one funny montage, Howerton’s Balsillie recasts his sales force (“Dead-eyed dumb fucks,” as he calls them) as actors, dispatching them to fancy restaurants and private clubs to talk loudly on their BlackBerrys, in an effort to call attention to the device. “It’s not a cell phone,” he insists. “It’s a status symbol.” 

Where Balsillie is eager to exploit the device’s appeal to a class of go-go C-suite dicks—and backdate employment contracts, and play cat-and-mouse with the SEC, and generally overpromise and underdeliver—Lazaridis is more preoccupied with the nuts-and-bolts of obsessively engineering a worthwhile product. His motto: “‘Good enough’ is the enemy of humanity.” For Baruchel (who, with great reluctance, relinquished his own vintage BlackBerry just two years ago), the film is a parable, warning about what happens “when you get so big that you’re beholden to other masters.” 

If Balsillie (“ Ballsley, not  Ball-silly ,” he seethes) is the corporate devil on Lazaridis’ shoulder, the better, or at least geekier, angels of his nature are represented by longtime friend and cofounder, Doug Fregin. As imagined (and played by) Johnson, Doug is a hyperactive goober in wide, windshield eyeglasses and a David Foster Wallace headband. He compares Wi-Fi signals to the Force in Star Wars , pays for business lunches with cash pried out of a velcro Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wallet, and uses “ Glengarry Glen Ross ” as a verb.

For Johnson, pop culture is a kind of lingua franca. His cult web series turned Viceland sitcom  Nirvanna the Band the Show , is riven with references and extended homages: to the Criterion Collection,  Nintendo ’s Wii Shop Wednesday, the rollerblading sequence set to a Prodigy track in the 1995 film  Hackers . But more than a pop encyclopedia, Johnson is also a deft prober of the nerd pathology. In his feature debut, 2013’s  The Dirties , he plays an alienated high schooler avenging himself on his bullies by plotting a school shooting, under the auspice of making a student film  about  a school shooting. “School shooting comedy” is a tough sell. But Johnson committed to the premise with verve, humor, and considerable intelligence, revealing how certain dorky defense mechanisms (from pop culture obsessiveness to irony) can curdle into out-and-out psychopathy. 

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In this movie, Johnson gives the pop culture geek a fairer, more forgiving, shake. He wanted to create what he calls “the anti- Big Bang Theory ,” referring to the wildly popular syndicated sitcom that he regards “detestable.” “It’s no coincidence,” he points out, “that the guys who invented the first tele-communicator were all  Star Trek fanatics.”

BlackBerry ’s opening credits montage situates the device as part of a longer pop culture lineage, running from  Star Trek to  Blade Runner, Inspector Gadget , and  Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.  The sequence draws a direct line from the pop culture obsessives of the past and the technologists of the present. As Johnson puts it, “I don’t think the nerds of the '90s get enough credit for inventing the future.” 

BlackBerry foregrounds this industriousness. In an early, legitimately thrilling sequence, a group of pale, bespectacled engineers frantically jury-rig a smartphone prototype out of a calculator, a TV remote, a Nintendo Game Boy, and a vintage Speak & Spell. Waking up at his desk the next morning in a puddle of his own drool, Doug declares, “I had a dream we were rich.” And then, citing  Dune , “And sometimes my dreams occur exactly as I dreamt them.”

But Doug’s dreams don’t materialize. Not exactly. However clever, these starry-eyed, far-sighted techies seem fatally outmatched by the realities of capital markets and corporate politicking. Balsillie sees the product foremost as a symbol of “total individualism … that fits in  your fist. ” The seriousness he affords the company—his marketing savvy, creative accounting, and ability to berate his underlings into submission—soon reveals itself in due course as a liability. 

While the CEOs push BlackBerry toward exponential growth, Johnson’s Doug is more concerned with holding on to the liberating, quasi-anarchic culture of tech innovation. As increasingly absurd deadlines loom, he makes a point of breaking for pizza parties, and emergency, in-office movie nights. (“They based Duke Nukem on this guy,” he chirps, pointing to Roddy Piper’s gun-toting wiseass in John Carpenter’s  They Live. ) Balsillie, meanwhile, writes him off as “a goof.” 

For Doug, the opportunity of making many billions of dollars does not have to run counter to a breezy atmosphere of innovation, experimentation, and goofing off. And  BlackBerry  is, tellingly, made in this same spirit.

Formally,  BlackBerry  is loose, almost improvisational. The camera roves, jitters, and pulls focus in an instant. The poppy humor and fly-on-the-wall, hyperrealist style combine in compelling ways. Imagine an Edgar Wright movie lensed like a Ken Loach film. The performances feel similarly off-the-cuff. When Howerton’s Balsillie attempts to intimidate a boardroom by howling, “I AM FROM WATERLOOOOOO! WHERE THE VAMPIRES HANG OUT!” the line feels snatched out of thin air. 

“I like when things are moving, when things are a little chaotic, when things are slightly unpredictable” says Howerton. “I think it creates an environment where you can create something that feels very real. It doesn't feel so calculated.” 

Baurchel calls Johnson’s process “organic.” He invites actors to go off-book, supplying their own reactions based on their understanding of the characters. Some in the company were less enthused by the free-form approach. Johnson recalls  Mad Men alum Rich Sommer, playing a Google engineer poached to rebuild BlackBerry’s network infrastructure, becoming so exasperated with the lack of more explicit direction that he removed his microphone on-set. (The shot of Sommer mouthing wordlessly is used in the final cut, suggesting his character’s own confusion and helplessness.) 

Despite being bigger-budgeted and more broadly appealing than, say, his mockumentary about a school shooter,  BlackBerry still feels intimate. Johnson reunites with a gang of fellow collaborators: writers, producers, editors, cinematographers, and a motley batch of like-minded pals who have all worked together on a string of small-scale, run-and-gun projects. There’s even a nose-thumbing, stick-it-to-the-man attitude apparent in the production’s liberal embrace of fair use copyright laws, which permit them to use extended clips from Hollywood blockbusters like  Raiders of the Lost Ark , without having to fork over hefty licensing fees.

This vaguely rebellious posture, and the value of cooperation, was Johnson’s way into  BlackBerry . “The only reason I even thought this story was interesting was because I thought, oh, these guys are independent filmmakers,” he explains, “who all of a sudden get in bed with somebody who really does know how the business side of filmmaking works. And that makes major cultural changes to the way that they're going to work together as friends.”

In the age of crypto bros, fraudulent CEOs, VCs bankrolling dopey apps, and a general disillusionment with the maximally profitable, minimally inspiring realm of “innovation,” tech culture can be fairly accused of forsaking its self-professed ideals of collaboration and camaraderie. But Johnson’s keen to keep that flame alive. He has made a movie about Big Tech’s vices and vicissitudes with a team of longtime collaborators, and a cast comprised largely of Canadian character actors, recruited from his backyard. 

BlackBerry, the company, may have grown too fast, lost its pluck. But  BlackBerry,  the movie, is a model of how to make something at scale, without having to do the same.  BlackBerry  plays like the comedy equivalent of the industrious dorks pulling an all-nighter in the garage, attempting to reengineer the world in their image.

To paraphrase an old Silicon Valley chestnut, when you move fast, things break. Move too fast, and those broken things become more valuable, and more irreparable. Or, as Research In Motion cofounder Douglas Fregin (or a “fictionalization” of him) puts it, while staring out at a bland, beige, soul-dead corporate office: “I finally understand that quote: ‘When you grow up, your heart dies.’ That’s from  Breakfast Club.  John Hughes.”

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Movie Reviews

A new film explains how the smartphone market slipped through blackberry's hands.

Justin Chang

Jay Baruchel plays Research In Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis in the film BlackBerry. IFC Films hide caption

Jay Baruchel plays Research In Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis in the film BlackBerry.

Like a lot of people, I'm a longtime iPhone user — in fact, I used an iPhone to record this very review. But I still have a lingering fondness for my very first smartphone — a BlackBerry — which I was given for work back in 2006. I loved its squat, round shape, its built-in keyboard and even its arthritis-inflaming scroll wheel.

Of course, the BlackBerry is now no more . And the story of how it became the hottest personal handheld device on the market, only to get crushed by the iPhone, is told in smartly entertaining fashion in a new movie simply titled BlackBerry.

Briskly adapted from Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff's book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry , this is the latest of a few recent movies, including Tetris and Air , that show us the origins of game-changing new products. But unlike those earlier movies, BlackBerry is as much about failure as it is about success, which makes it perhaps the most interesting one of the bunch.

If you're clinging to an old BlackBerry, it will officially stop working on Jan. 4

It begins in 1996, when Research In Motion is just a small, scrappy company hawking modems in Waterloo, Ontario. Jay Baruchel plays Mike Lazaridis, a mild-mannered tech whiz who's the brains of the operation. His partner is a headband-wearing, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -loving goofball named Douglas Fregin, played by Matt Johnson, who also co-wrote and directed the movie.

Johnson's script returns us to an era of VHS tapes and dial-up internet, when the mere idea of a phone that could handle emails — let alone games, music and other applications — was unimaginable. That's exactly the kind of product that Mike and Doug struggle to pitch to a sleazy investor named Jim Balsillie, played by a raging Glenn Howerton, from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia .

All Tech Considered

Saying goodbye to blackberry's iconic original keyboard.

Jim knows very little about tech but senses that the Research In Motion guys might be onto something, and he joins their ragtag operation and tries to whip their slackerish employees into shape. And so, after a crucial deal with Bell Atlantic, later to be known as Verizon, the BlackBerry is born. And it becomes such a hit, so addictive among users, that people start calling it the "CrackBerry."

The time frame shifts to the early 2000s, with Research In Motion now based in a slick new office, with a private jet at its disposal. But the mix of personalities is as volatile as ever — sometimes they gel, but more often they clash.

She left her 2007 iPhone in its box for over a decade. It just sold for $63K

Mike, as sweetly played by Baruchel, is now co-CEO, and he's still the shy-yet-stubborn perfectionist, forever tinkering with new improvements to the BlackBerry, and refusing to outsource the company's manufacturing operations to China. Jim, also co-CEO, is the Machiavellian dealmaker who pulls one outrageous stunt after another, whether he's poaching top designers from places like Google or trying to buy a National Hockey League team and move it to Ontario. That leaves Doug on the outside looking in, trying to boost staff morale with Raiders of the Lost Ark movie nights and maintain the geeky good vibes of the company he started years earlier.

As a director, Johnson captures all this in-house tension with an energetic handheld camera and a jagged editing style. He also makes heavy use of a pulsing synth score that's ideally suited to a tech industry continually in flux.

BlackBerry: If You Don't Survive, May You Rest In Peace

The movie doesn't entirely sustain that tension or sense of surprise to the finish; even if you don't know exactly how it all went down in real life, it's not hard to see where things are headed. Jim's creative accounting lands the company in hot water right around the time Apple is prepping the 2007 launch of its much-anticipated iPhone. That marks the beginning of the end, and it's fascinating to watch as BlackBerry goes into its downward spiral. It's a stinging reminder that success and failure often go together, hand in thumb-scrolling hand.

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BlackBerry review: one of 2023’s best movies so far

“Director Matt Johnson's BlackBerry is a lean and engrossing rise-and-fall drama that currently ranks as one of the year's best films.”

• Matt Johnson's confident, assured direction
• A trio of compelling lead performances
• A complicated story that's made easily digestible
• A third-act that pulls its punches just a bit too much

BlackBerry tells a familiar story. The new film from Operation Avalanche director Matt Johnson is, in many ways, a classic rise-and-fall drama in the same vein as American epics like The Social Network and — to a much lesser extent — Goodfellas . Its players are familiar archetypes and, over the course of BlackBerry ’s two-hour runtime, they fill their roles well. The film’s script, meanwhile, which was penned by Johnson and Matthew Miller, charts its objectively complex corporate story in as streamlined and straightforward a way as possible.

Unlike The Social Network , though, BlackBerry doesn’t try to make any specific points about the current state of American society. Its themes of reckless ambition and the corrosive nature of greed are timeless and, much like the rest of BlackBerry , familiar to anyone who has seen a film like it before. However, despite boasting much more modest intentions than many of its spiritual predecessors, BlackBerry is built with a level of confidence and precision that makes it one of the better movies of the year so far.

Spanning roughly 20 years, BlackBerry begins in the mid-1990s when a pair of lifelong friends, Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and Doug Fregin (Johnson), decide to meet with an ambitious corporate shark, Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), to present their pitch for a phone that can connect to the internet and receive and send emails. Jim, in the wake of losing a job due to his own arrogance, offers to help Doug and Mike pitch and sell their phone on the condition that he be named one of the CEOs of their Canada-based tech company and awarded a considerable percentage of the business itself. Mike, desperate to rise up through the tech world’s ranks, accepts Jim’s offer.

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In the years that follow, Jim, Mike, and Doug manage to turn their device, the BlackBerry , into one of the most popular and important products in the world. Along the way, Doug is forced to stand by and watch as Mike becomes more and more comfortable in the corporate world that they had previously strived not to get sucked in by. Their success is, of course, inevitably challenged by the late-2000s emergence of competitors like Apple and Android , whose devices have the potential to oust BlackBerry from the world’s phone market altogether.

Those familiar with BlackBerry’s story will already know how everything ultimately ends for Mike, Doug, and Jim. Johnson’s film, to its credit, doesn’t try to hide or surprise viewers with BlackBerry’s inevitable problems. His and Miller’s script, instead, plainly plants the seeds for the company’s third-act turn, and it’s a testament to the deftness of BlackBerry ‘s storytelling that the downfall of the eponymous business feels like the result of decisions made by its characters rather than shifts in the market that were simply out of their control.

On-screen, Howerton, Johnson, and Baruchel create a trio of conflicting, distinct personalities. As Balsillie, Howerton is a constantly overflowing bucket of rage and arrogance, which makes him a unique counter to Baruchel’s conflict-averse, but quietly cunning Lazaridis. In-between them, Johnson emerges as the heart and soul of BlackBerry . His Doug Fregin is a red-headband-clad movie nerd who is characterized as an anticorporate slacker for much of the film, only to later be revealed to be far wiser about the complex nature of workplace politics than he lets on. Johnson, for his part, imbues the character’s latter turn with enough empathy to render it believable.

Outside of its core trio, BlackBerry establishes a revolving door of memorable supporting characters, including Paul Stannos (Rich Sommer) and Ritchie Cheung (SungWon Cho), a pair of accomplished engineers who get poached from their respective companies by Howerton’s Balsillie. As the arrogant head of a rival phone company that’s interested in taking over BlackBerry, Cary Elwes chews up the scenery and steals one memorable second-act scene, while Saul Rubinek elevates several key moments as the spokesperson for BlackBerry’s biggest carrier partner. Altogether, these actors help flesh out the film’s otherwise stale world of corporate offices and private planes.

Despite  BlackBerry ‘s ambitious size and scope, editor Curt Lobb also ensures that the film moves at a consistently fast clip from the moment it begins to the moment it ends. The film speeds through its story — wisely relying on a handful of well-placed needle drops to transition between its three key time periods — without ever introducing its characters and important plot beats too quickly to allow BlackBerry to devolve into a confusing mess. In that sense, the film tonally and narratively resembles 2015’s The Big Short more closely than it does any other. Both movies, notably, succeed at rendering a staggering amount of corporate jargon easily accessible, which is a feat that’s easier said than done.

BlackBerry ’s connections to The Big Short don’t stop and end with its plot. Visually, Johnson adopts the same kind of quasi-documentary style for BlackBerry as its Adam McKay-directed predecessor. The film’s aesthetic, fortunately, elevates its 1990s, analog origins, while Johnson’s slick, fast-paced directorial style works well with BlackBerry ’s editorial pace and on-screen story. The film’s greatest accomplishment, in other words, is just how artistically cohesive and assured it feels. Ultimately, it’s the confidence that Johnson brings to BlackBerry that allows it to enter the same thematic and narrative arena as some of the greatest films in the history of American cinema.

The film, of course, doesn’t quite reach the same heights as many of the classics that have come before it. In its third act, BlackBerry pulls its punches just a bit too much — letting its characters off the hook for mistakes that are far too disastrous to justify the relatively light treatment they’re given. And as compelling as the story of BlackBerry’s rise and fall is, the company’s death at the hands of Apple and others doesn’t ultimately hold as much global weight as some of the other rise-and-fall stories that have been realized on-screen before.

But even if BlackBerry doesn’t hit quite hard enough to be considered an instant classic, it still makes a considerable impact. For its director, the film not only marks a new artistic high, but also announces Johnson as a filmmaker worth paying closer attention to in the years to come. His latest is a film that, unlike its protagonists, makes nearly all the right calls.

BlackBerry is now playing in theaters.

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We are more than halfway through 2023, and there have already been dozens of stellar films. From major blockbusters to delightful comedies and thought-provoking biopics, 2023 has given us several incredible pictures that have been widely embraced by critics and audiences alike.

Only a few months after it debuted in theaters, Missing is now the most popular movie on Netflix. Anyone who has seen the movie, which focuses on a teenage girl who discovers that her mother has been kidnapped while on vacation and races to figure out what happened, understands why it's managed to climb so high on the streaming service's charts.

It's a mystery worth watching, and many Netflix viewers seem to have figured that out. Here are five reasons the movie has managed to become such a Netflix phenomenon, and why you should watch it right now. It has a unique storytelling structure MISSING - Official Trailer (HD)

Review: A frenetic take on the crash-and-burn trajectory of the iconic ‘BlackBerry’

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For a certain generation (mostly Gen X and older millennials), the BlackBerry wasn’t just a phone with email — it was a world- and life-altering shift, a status symbol that quickly became a shackle to the inbox. While those lifestyle aspects aren’t necessarily explored in the device biopic “BlackBerry,” written and directed by Matt Johnson, they float to the surface of the subconscious for those who experienced the smartphone revolution in real time.

Johnson leans into the nostalgia , seeding period-appropriate tunes like the Strokes’ “Someday” to aid the acid-flashbacks to the mid-aughts, and utilizing VHS-style camcorder footage in montage. But he also opens with a foreboding bit of archival footage of Arthur C. Clarke declaring that “men will no longer commute—they will communicate,” a promise realized to an extreme during the COVID-19 pandemic (the next corporate biopic should be “Zoom”).

The possibility of email in your fist seemed like a passport to the utopian lifestyle of the digital nomad: Just imagine, you could email from the beach. Then the reality manifests, and suddenly you have to send emails while you’re on the beach, thereby ruining the whole point of being on a beach. It meant less liberation from the office and more never not working, creating a Pavlovian response to the clicks, dings and buzzes.

The ‘sort of dirty,’ semi-‘cynical’ story behind Hollywood’s hottest new trend

Experts tell The Times why Tetris, Air Jordans, BlackBerries, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and more are suddenly getting a star turn at the movies.

May 11, 2023

These suddenly ubiquitous devices, pressed into the hands of executives and assistants everywhere in the early 2000s, seemed to spring out of thin air, and then suddenly vanished with the advent of the touch-screen iPhone. Johnson and co-writer Matthew Miller, adapting the book “Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry,” by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, show us where the BlackBerry came from and details its demise at the hands of market forces and business missteps. Johnson, a Canadian filmmaker and actor known for the 2016 indie mockumentary “Operation Avalanche,” about NASA, situates “BlackBerry” as a proudly north-of-the-border story: a biopic of the device invented by the Waterloo, Ontario-based company Research in Motion, and a business thriller, utilizing his faux documentary style.

Cinematographer Jacob Raab’s camera is very, very busy: constantly roaming, zooming in, focusing, glancing up and down, hiding behind doors and windows, spying on the characters as if it’s someone else in the room or an amateur cameraman fiddling with a new toy.

This immersive, restless style takes a bit of getting used to, and so does Johnson, who co-stars as Douglas Fregin, the co-founder of Research in Motion and the wild, antic, playful nerd to Jay Baruchel’s brilliant but cripplingly unassertive Mike Lazaridis, who obsessively attempts to quiet the electro-buzz of products manufactured in China. They have a great plan to put email in a phone, but their business acumen is atrocious. They’re too busy having movie night with their employees to realize they’ve been taken for a million-dollar ride by U.S. Robotics.

Enter Jim Balsillie, played with a florid ferocity by Glenn Howerton , the top of his head shaved to replicate Balsillie’s male-pattern baldness. He reaches out to Mike and Doug when he finds himself out of a job and offers them an influx of cash for a stake in the company. He finds Research in Motion completely disorganized, up to its eyeballs in debt, and so he leverages his mortgage, and with his Harvard Business School training, utilizes the time-honored tradition of screaming expletives and doing light securities fraud to build BlackBerry into the market behemoth that it became.

It’s a strange sensation, watching “BlackBerry,” to find yourself rooting for morally compromised screamer Jim (Howerton is simply dazzling in the role) and the iron-fist enforcer he hires as chief operating officer, Charles Purdy (Michael Ironside). Johnson’s Doug would turn the company into a playground for his pals if he had his way, while Mike is too avoidant and passive to assert authority, leaving the dirty work to Jim. Howerton is also far and away the most charismatic performer onscreen, and you’re unable to rip your eyes away from him, though Baruchel is doing fascinating, if subtler, work as well.

What emerges from the electronic noise and fussy aesthetic of “BlackBerry” is a compelling portrait of a company that flew too close to the sun. Jim’s fast-and-loose tactics in running the business — poaching talent from Google, creating demand for the devices as status symbols, and selling them before the network capability was established — are matched by Mike’s innovative mind, but it could only last for so long, especially with Apple nipping at their heels. However, it’s the shortcuts and shady deals that do them in, not the shiny new iPhone.

Perhaps Mike, a man driven by the sonic and tactile experience of electronics, was too attached to the satisfying clicking of the tiny keyboard. With 2000s nostalgia in the zeitgeist, maybe Icarus will rise again, though Johnson’s portrait indicates how unlikely that would be.

'BlackBerry'

Rated: R, for language throughout Running time: 2 hours, 4 minutes Playing: Starts May 12 in general release

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BlackBerry Reviews

One of 2023's 20 best films.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 12, 2024

As the film progresses, the humor becomes more ironic, but it never loses its ability to make us reflect and laugh at the same time. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Mar 1, 2024

The comedy comes instead from Johnson’s deliberate direction. It’s found in an ironic zoom here, a hilarious cut there. This alchemy finds the most magic in how it supports Glenn Howerton’s towering performance.

Full Review | Feb 13, 2024

It is in Glenn Howerton’s over-the-top portrayal of Jim that BlackBerry soars above everything else you’ve seen in this genre, and catapults BlackBerry into the satirical stratosphere.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 3, 2024

Friendship and family start us off...and here we are still thrashing...

Full Review | Jan 5, 2024

It's a devilishly entertaining comedy-drama, that boasts solid performances and never loses its consistent pace chronicling the rise and fall of BlackBerry. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jan 2, 2024

Jay Baruchel is wonderful as BlackBerry creator Mike Lazaridis, but it’s Glenn Howerton who steals the show as co-CEO Jim Balsillie, giving a hysterical, hot-tempered performance that could slot right into an episode of Succession.

Full Review | Dec 22, 2023

[It's] a tale of what happens when pals become business partners, when smart little companies get into bed with big dumb ones, and what happens to game-changers when the rules are been thrown out the window by someone else.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 8, 2023

It’s by the numbers, and its sense of self importance renders it all kind of silly.

Full Review | Nov 28, 2023

Presenting us with very human protagonists and developing a potentially boring narrative with energy, “BlackBerry” works as a docu-drama. Surely those who were alive at this time and had a BlackBerry will feel some nostalgia. Full review in Spanish.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 25, 2023

Despite playing the story for more laughs than are probably necessary, the lead performances of BlackBerry are very watchable, and the story of the brand’s rise and demise is certainly one worth watching.

Full Review | Nov 15, 2023

This entertaining film features standout work from Baruchel, especially when he begins to crack with the realization that Apple is getting ready to kill his company with their upcoming iPhone, a product with the highest consumer interest in history.

Full Review | Oct 24, 2023

BlackBerry is an impressive feat that marks Johnson’s leap from indie darling/TV Director to someone to genuinely watch out for.

Full Review | Oct 18, 2023

Investing heartily in its story's personalities, and eschewing myth-making reverence or preciousness, BlackBerry's makers entertainingly frame their film as a workplace dramedy about industry gate-crashers rudely ejected from a party of their own staging.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Oct 15, 2023

Pacy, well-acted, and brilliantly written, this boardroom farce pushes all right the buttons.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 10, 2023

Rise-and-fall stories so often gloat after the bursting of the bubble, but this one is all condolences.

[BlackBerry] perfectly captures the nerds-versus-the-system volatility of the tech bubble: Baruchel and Johnson stammer and gulp, while Howerton commands the film like a fascist warrior who uses fools to floss his teeth.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 9, 2023

Johnson is also ruthless in his depiction of the business reality behind the glossy surface waffle of the tech dream.

Yet despite the guffaws, the film (directed by Matt Johnson) is deeper than a mere morality play about villainous money men.

It’s a film, ultimately, about failure. And immediately that makes it a far more intriguing proposition than all the boardroom backslapping of a movie such as Air.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 8, 2023

‘BlackBerry’ Review: Jay Baruchel & Glenn Howerton Star in Surprising Exploration of Corporate Greed

Matt Johnson’s new movie pushes the boundaries of a docudrama by adding fun, surprise, and excitement to the dramatization of a dense true history.

This review was originally part of our coverage for the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival.

Everyday technology expands so fast and with such intensity that high-tech novelties tend to consume history itself. For instance, it's hard to imagine a world where Google's Android and Apple's iOS were not the leading players of the cellphone game. Still, a little more than a decade ago, BlackBerry portables were coveted by every teenager and used by businessmen as a symbol of status. Directed by Matt Johnson , BlackBerry is a new docudrama that proposes to explore the rise and fall of the once-popular cell phone brand and its parent company, Research In Motion (RIM). And while the subject might seem uninteresting to people who just don't care about what happens inside big corporations, with BlackBerry , Johnson manages to craft a thrilling and moving story about friendship, pride, and the brutality of the free market.

BlackBerry takes us back to 1996, when visionary engineer Mike Lazaridis (played by Jay Baruchel ) came up with an idea to revolutionize the communication market: putting an email machine inside a cell phone. While we are all very used to our smartphones nowadays, it hasn't been long since Lazaridis granted us internet access on the go. Even so, the BlackBerry brand has become almost unknown to younger generations, making Lazaridis' story ever more tragic.

While Lazaridis had the best ideas and the will to implement them to perfection, he lacked the business spirit needed to actually sell phones. That's why he joins forces with salesman Jim Balsillie (played by Glenn Howerton ), a cutthroat capitalist who couldn't care less about the quality of Lazaridis' inventions. And so began RIM's journey to dominate the phone market in the US and the world, with Balsillie pushing for an aggressive expansion while Lazaridis tried to remain on his moral high ground.

RELATED: Jay Baruchel & Glenn Howerton on the "Great, Untold Story" of 'BlackBerry' & What Surprised Them Most to Learn

Baruchel and Howerton play their parts to perfection, showing how the opposite personalities of RIM co-CEOs helped to keep the company ahead of competitors for over a decade. But BlackBerry also plays as a tragedy, as we watch Lazaridis compromise his beliefs in favor of achieving the impossible goals set both by Balsillie and external forces willing to engulf RIM's market. That’s what makes Johnson's movie work so well. Since Johnson's camera is concerned about the truth of RIM's story, BlackBerry cautiously explores the intricacies of the corporate world. Simultaneously, the movie still manages to keep the audience invested thanks to the emotional stakes of its very human characters.

BlackBerry 's two leads are not alone in turning a corporate docudrama into a touching story, as Matt Johnson's Douglas “Doug” Fregin , Lazaridis' goofball friend, helped him create the RIM company long before Balsillie came into the picture. And for the entire duration of BlackBerry , Doug will try to keep Lazaridis grounded, pouring all his energies into making sure RIM is a company worth working for, where all kinds of nerds can feel welcomed. While Doug often serves as a comedic relief and helps to keep set the funny tone of BlackBerry, he’s also the emotional heart of the movie, a permanent reminder that some dreams are not worth selling, lest we lose our souls.

There’s no question BlackBerry does a beautiful job documenting the history of RIM. Based on Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff 's book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry , Johnson's docudrama never refrains from exploring the minutia of the corporate business. The movie is not only an homage to Lazaridis' groundbreaking technology, but it also dwells on the legal frauds and fake business promises that make the money machine keep turning in the capitalistic system. It also documents with precision internal errors and external surprises that eventually lead to the BlackBerry brand becoming obsolete. Still, Johnson's new movie pushes the boundaries of a docudrama by adding fun, surprise, and exciting the dramatization of a dense true history. And in doing so, Johnson makes a complex matter easy to digest and extremely entertaining.

BlackBerry is in theaters now.

‘BlackBerry’: A Superhero Origin Story for the Great O.G. Smartphone

By David Fear

Never, ever underestimate the power of a glowering, growling Glenn Howerton .

It’s not like the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia co-creator hasn’t previously played someone who acts horrifically yet still keeps you on his side. (See: Every single episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Howerton is in.) Nor is it off-brand for the writer-actor-producer to take on a role in which he radiates that he’s better than the idiots and saps and suckers surrounding him, as fans of the late, great sitcom A.P. Bio can attest. But Howerton brings something to BlackBerry , the scrappy Canadian indie about a scrappy Canadian company that changed the world, that goes above and beyond his usual lovable sociopath act. It’s not range. It’s rage. Pure, 100-percent uncut short-fuse anger. Beautiful, sputtering, spittle-flying fury.

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And still: There’s Howerton, his head gleaming like a bullet about to be fired into some unlucky soul’s heart, a beacon of desire for power and prestige and maybe the chance to own his own hockey team, burning through every scene like not only Balsillie’s livelihood but his life depended on it. There’s something so compelling about what he’s doing that he almost convinces you that BlackBerry is better than it is. And then you remember that it’s still a movie that treats “good enough” as the enemy of perfection and creativity, yet still feels it’s acceptable to be just good enough as a dramatization based on a true story. Irony — it’s a bitch.

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BlackBerry Is More Office Space Than Social Network

When we first glimpse Glenn Howerton’s Jim Balsillie in BlackBerry , we see only the top half of his face, caught in a rearview mirror. So he’s all eyebrows and forehead, a near-comical vision of drive and animalistic ambition, as he pulls into a parking spot and looks around suspiciously, noting a limo full of corporate types filing out behind him. It’s a streamlined and accurate first impression. Described as a “shark,” the ruthless Balsillie turns out to be just what the clumsy, introverted nerds who founded Research in Motion (RIM), the tiny company that in the late 1990s and early 2000s would transform the cell-phone industry, need to make their harebrained schemes reality.

Directed by Matt Johnson, BlackBerry basically presents the story of RIM and the rise of the smartphone as a sitcom pitch: What happens when two affable, not-ready-for-prime-time dorks from Waterloo, Canada — brilliant engineer Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and his can-do cheerleader pal Doug Fregin (Johnson) — are joined by a crisply suited, Harvard-educated, phone-smashing apex predator. Balsillie is not a tech guy, and it’s only by chance that he realizes the potential of Lazaridis and Fregin’s idea of a cell phone that can also send and receive emails. But he knows how to sell, and he knows how to go for the kill when he’s got something he knows people want. It’s a solid comic setup. One of the great pleasures of BlackBerry is watching Balsillie’s befuddled, running disgust at Lazaridis and Fregin’s hapless ways, at the chaotic ineptitude of their finances, their utter lack of business sense, their go-along-to-get-along management style. I would happily watch several seasons of these three going at it.

But there’s also a strain of fear running through Howerton’s portrayal of Balsillie that brings dramatic urgency to the film. He joins RIM after getting fired from his previous job (apparently for being too much of a go-getter), and in all his actions we sense a simmering terror at what will happen if this new endeavor fails. Even after the movie zooms forward to the 2000s, when BlackBerry devices were ubiquitous and RIM was on top of the world, Balsillie is in corporate panic mode, frantically trying to sell more units and innovate rapidly — or rather, force others to innovate rapidly — to avoid being bought out by the people who make PalmPilots. (Remember PalmPilots?) In other words, success begets more fear. There’s probably a disturbing lesson in there somewhere.

It’s the comic energy generated by the triumvirate of Howerton, Baruchel, and Johnson that really drives BlackBerry , but Johnson and his co-writer Matthew Miller also find lively ways to dramatize the technological concepts at play. Saul Rubinek has a memorable turn as an executive at a phone company who questions and even mocks RIM’s intentions at every turn, thus setting up scenes that helpfully explain just what exactly these engineers are up to. It’s a pretty transparent device; over the course of decades, Rubinek’s character doesn’t seem to age or even change chairs. But it works marvelously, because BlackBerry never takes itself too seriously.

In fact, the film’s charm is that it doesn’t take itself seriously at all. BlackBerry is more Office Space than Social Network . Even the main characters’ hairlines — Howerton’s fake-looking bald head (which he apparently shaved), Baruchel’s phony blond wig, and Johnson’s ever-present red bandana — look like discards from a sketch-comedy troupe. By keeping things so loose, Johnson is able to get away with his simplifications and any convenient rewritings of the facts. But the approach also gives the actors free rein to go big and broad, because that’s where the laughs usually are. The filmmakers in this case are content to entertain; if you learn some history along the way, that’s on you.

Correction: A previous version of this review incorrectly stated that Howerton is wearing a bald cap in the film; that is his actual (shaved) head.

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BlackBerry (2023)

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Common sense media reviewers.

Fun dramedy about world's first smartphone has swearing.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Focuses on how business can expose the cracks in a

Mike Lazaridis and Doug show how friendship and a

Main cast and key filmmakers are all White men. So

Confrontations, yelling.

Frequent use of words including "f--k," "f---ing,"

The film is about the rise of BlackBerry, so the p

Adults drink alcohol.

Parents need to know that BlackBerry is a fact-based dramedy about the rise and fall of the BlackBerry, the world's first smartphone. Expect plenty of swearing ("f--k," "s--t," and much more), as well as a few scenes of adult characters drinking. The film could be interpreted as promoting STEM themes related…

Positive Messages

Focuses on how business can expose the cracks in a friendship and potentially ruin it, as well as how people can become corrupted by power and money. While the company behind BlackBerry did rely on teamwork to create the phone, the film focuses more on how the rise of BlackBerry led members of the company to greed. STEM themes related to technology innovation.

Positive Role Models

Mike Lazaridis and Doug show how friendship and a mutual interest in technology can lead to industry disruption. But Mike gets caught up in the corporate life thanks to businessman/BlackBerry co-CEO Jim Balsillie, and Jim himself pulls financial trickery to bring BlackBerry to market.

Diverse Representations

Main cast and key filmmakers are all White men. Some people of color (Asian American) among the extras, as well as one White woman.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Frequent use of words including "f--k," "f---ing," "goddamn," "son of a bitch."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

The film is about the rise of BlackBerry, so the phone and its features play a central role. The iPhone, the BlackBerry's direct competition, is also featured, as is Verizon. The products are referenced as part of the film's story, not necessarily as product endorsements.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

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Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that BlackBerry is a fact-based dramedy about the rise and fall of the BlackBerry, the world's first smartphone. Expect plenty of swearing ("f--k," "s--t," and much more), as well as a few scenes of adult characters drinking. The film could be interpreted as promoting STEM themes related to technology innovation and can also serve as a morality tale about the dangers of corporate greed. Jay Baruchel , Matt Johnson (who also directed), and Glenn Howerton star. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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• Parents say (1)

Based on 1 parent review

Darkly comedic true story of the first mobile phone

What's the story.

BLACKBERRY follows Mike Lazaridis ( Jay Baruchel ) and Doug Fregin ( Matt Johnson , who also directs), the inventors of the world's first smartphone. Their invention is taken to market by savvy and anger-prone exec Jim Balsillie ( Glenn Howerton ), which leads Mike and Doug down a path that tests their friendship -- and reveals their true goals with the company.

Is It Any Good?

BlackBerry is a funny, insightful dramedy about the smartphone that started it all. While it might start off a bit slowly (à la T he Office ), the film develops its own personality and sense of self the more it brings viewers into the friendship between Mike and Doug. Baruchel in particular convincingly portrays a man who started his business out of friendship and community but grows into someone who's solely focused on the bottom line. Howerton, meanwhile, expertly plays Jim as a classic yuppie who probably needs anger management. Overall, BlackBerry is one of those biopics that can fully entertain as well as inform.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how accurate they think BlackBerry is. Why might filmmakers change the facts in a movie based on a true story? How could you find out more?

Did you notice any positive diverse representations in the film? Why is it important to note when media lacks diversity?

How does the BlackBerry revolutionize the phone industry? What brings about its fall?

How does Mike and Doug's friendship evolve over the course of the film? How is it tested? How does Mike change over the course of the film? Does he change for the worse or for the better?

Movie Details

• In theaters : May 12, 2023
• On DVD or streaming : June 2, 2023
• Cast : Jay Baruchel , Glenn Howerton , Matt Johnson , Michael Ironside
• Director : Matt Johnson
• Inclusion Information : Female writers
• Studio : IFC Films
• Genre : Comedy
• Topics : STEM , Friendship , History
• Run time : 119 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : language throughout
• Last updated : March 12, 2024

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Movie Reviews, Rankings, Film News and More

BlackBerry Movie Review: A Reinvigorating Comedy Punching at Corporate Greed

Blackberry is directed by matt johnson and stars jay baruchel and glenn howerton.

Zipping through the years of the rise and fall of the first texting cellphone, the aptly-titled BlackBerry serves as a fantastic tale of corporate greed and those incapable of dealing with the success and fame that comes with building new technology. Incredible acting and direction contributes to one of 2023’s best movies.

Whenever I get the age old question of “What’s your favorite movie ever?” I generally try to preface my answer by saying it’s hard to quantify hundreds of screenings and Blu-ray playbacks into a single film – before ultimately stating that it’s probably The Social Network . Sure, maybe that choice says a bit about the cynicism hiding inside myself given that it’s about teens unable to be self-deprecating while suing each other for rights over a multimillion dollar idea, but it’s that combination of self-loathing personal incapabilities and witty dialogue that makes it such a rewatchable film.

Now I can state that I’ve never seen a movie fully accomplish what The Social Network was able to, but I think we’ve come as close as ever with BlackBerry – the movie about the meteoric rise and sensational fall of the BlackBerry phone, and those incompetent souls who managed to gain just a small sliver of power off of it.

Not much was known about the production of BlackBerry until it was put on the big screen in front of viewers at film festivals. This was mostly due to its lower register cast and crew who hadn’t amount to many widely released films yet. But due to the quality of BlackBerry , and its ripping and roaring script that had me howling for moments on end, the movie has become a sort of sensation, not unlike the early 2000s phone that the plot is based on.

The story centers around the two co-CEOs of Research in Motion (RIM), a company that specializes in early tech hardware before diving headfirst into a risky gamble that sending e-mails is possible (and addictive) if proven functionable on a cellphone. The movie operates early on a Revenge of the Nerds -style arch as director Matt Johnson plays third fiddle as the snappy programmer Doug – who offers much of the film’s comedic artillery, which almost unilaterally lands (at least for me).

The two CEOs are Mike Lazaridis ( Jay Baruchel , a reserved role for the actor occasionally paired with Seth Rogen or a dragon named Toothless) and Jim Balsillie ( Glenn Howerton , doing whatever the opposite of reserved is). Mike is in charge of production and design. It’s ultimately his inventiveness and calculus that helps get the BlackBerry phone to prototype. Jim handles the marketing, and boy does he ever. The raging and rampaging Glenn Howerton goes to great lengths to portray Jim as a monster, but a monster that’s able to sell a hell of a lot of phones.

The movie operates under a style of crossmatching The Social Network with The Office and Succession , it’s brutal, confronting, and slapstick hilarious around every corner. It never loses steam as it jumps from the board meetings that launch BlackBerry cellphones into homes, to the anxiety caused by competitors like Apple using their designs to create something that pushes boundaries even further. There have been plenty of films in the past about the idea of building something that changes how society operates, but few of them look at what happens when they’re pushed to the brink of being obsolete.

Reviews for Films like BlackBerry (2023)

Sure, at times the film feels like the skeleton of a movie like The Social Network , but BlackBerry never fully devolves into self-parody. This mostly leans on the shoulders of Jay Baruchel, who has to combat Glenn Howerton’s hurricane-like style of performance with one that is much more reserved and calculated. Baruchel’s Mike is the brains of the operation, he just can’t convey it in a pitch meeting the way that Jim does – running into each room like a bull in a China shop.

BlackBerry also has a cold and understated filmmaking style that helps in conjunction with the performance quite a bit. It’s never overbearing or trying to cut into what works within the frame, it does such a great job of peering into rooms without announcing itself. Again, it reminded me a bit of The Office in this manner for how quiet and observant it is.

Simply put, BlackBerry is one of the best films of 2023 as of now. It’s prescient with how simpleton management can create tumultuous work environments, and how those that build new pieces of technology and infrastructure for our world aren’t always people worthy enough of being tasked with the fame and money that comes with it. An excellent viewing experience hot off the end of Succession , which feels like the right double billing for a movie like this.

Genre: Comedy , Drama , History

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BlackBerry Movie Cast and Credits

Jay Baruchel as Mike Lazaridis

Glenn Howerton as Jim Balsillie

Matt Johnson as Doug Fregin

Director: Matt Johnson

Writers: Matt Johnson , Matthew Miller , Jacquie McNish (Original Writer)

Cinematography: Jared Raab

Editor: Curt Lobb

Composer: Jay McCarrol

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Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – BlackBerry (2023)

October 2, 2023 by Robert Kojder

BlackBerry , 2023.

Directed by Matt Johnson. Starring Glenn Howerton, Jay Baruchel, Matt Johnson, Cary Elwes, Saul Rubinek, Michael Ironside, SungWon Cho, Rich Sommer, and Michelle Giroux.

The true story of the meteoric rise & catastrophic demise of the world’s first smartphone, BlackBerry is a whirlwind ride through a ruthlessly competitive Silicon Valley at breakneck speeds.

May 5th, 2023, marked the beginning of the tenth Chicago Critics Film Festival, which always boasts a thoughtfully curated selection of movies that deserve to be seen. For this 10-year milestone, there’s also a theme of incorporating the works of filmmakers and actors that have been a part of the festival in years past.

One such case is the opening-night curtain jerker, BlackBerry , which follows the rise and fall of the technological device, coming from co-writer/Director Matt Johnson, who appeared in a previous festival selection called The Dirties , but this time appearing in person for a post-discussion Q&A and trivia game where he gave away Criterion Collection DVDs for correctly answering questions about his film.

Comparisons to The Social Network have probably already been made, which is not necessarily a bad thing considering what Matt Johnson does so well here (co-writing alongside Matthew Miller, adapting books by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff) is home in on the characterizations of the real-life people rather than focus on the technology itself. The story involves nerdy best friends Mike Lazaridis (a silver-haired Jay Baruchel) and Doug (a dopey-looking Matt Johnson), with the former serving as a perfectionist determined to succeed with their small company’s ambition to create the world’s first smartphone, whereas Doug and the rest of the staff are more laid-back, preferring to enjoy their jobs. Doug sports Doom T-shirts and regularly hosts movie nights, painting a picture of stereotypical losers (by the standards of the time) that happened to luck into something extraordinary that would inevitably tear them apart based on their philosophies regarding going about the work.

It’s not long before they are screwed over by their current work partner, forcing their hand into getting into bed with business shark Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton, who tornados his way through every scene with power-hungry rage), who has the means to get a shell of the product in front of potential buyers before mass production. He also has a habit of temperamentally degrading the lower-level workers at every corner, drawing the typical stark contrast between ruthless executives and employees. Unsurprisingly, with more and more success, alongside the trials and tribulations from overambition, the work culture becomes a different place, with Mike becoming more like Jim, gradually treating Doug like a piece of dirt.

Jim’s hunger for wealth and control also goes far beyond technology, at one point looking into purchasing a hockey team for nationalistic reasons, hoping to bring that team to Canada. It’s yet another power-play that further fractures the good things they have going, and Glenn Howerton leans into that thirst for conquest, storming and shouting his way through every scene. Aside from the strong characterizations of the three main players, it’s also refreshing to see the technology work culture treated with such nerdom. In the Q&A, Matt Johnson mentions that most of these workers were simply hackers from Canada that were generally degenerate gamers, expressing that he intended to go for the feel and look of the workplace environment of a gaming studio in the 1990s and early 2000s. 

And while the script doesn’t quite reach the highs of Aaron Sorkin’s work, it’s admittedly far sharper than anticipated, with a gut-punch ending calling back to Matt’s morals and the kind of person he vowed never to become. BlackBerry is a scintillating and often riotously hilarious cautionary tale about wealth, business ethics, power, and friendship. One doesn’t need to know a damn thing about the device to find this film riveting.

Flickering Myth Rating  – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★  / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check  here  for new reviews, follow my  Twitter  or  Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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BlackBerry and Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver: the seven best films to watch on TV this week

Thrills abound in a smart, funny tale of mobile phone innovation, while Zack Snyder’s space opera returns for an epic battle

Pick of the week

For those with fond memories of TV drama Halt and Catch Fire , set during the birth of the personal computer industry, Matt Johnson’s fact-inspired comedy-drama about the rise and fall of the BlackBerry mobile phone will inspire a familiar thrill. There’s the brilliant but naive nerd (Jay Baruchel’s Mike Lazaridis) with one great idea (a cellphone that is also a pager and an email machine!); the aggressive, savvy businessman (Glenn Howerton’s perma-furious Jim Balsillie) who pushes the laid-back tech-heads to success; and the relentless drive for profit that eats up and spits out Mike’s small, collegiate operation. A smart, funny cautionary tale. Friday 19 April, noon, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere

Charlie Chaplin’s tendency towards sentimentality has often been a critical stick with which to beat him. This, his first feature-length comedy, may not change many minds on that score, but the emoting does come in small doses – and it’s also a prime example of how terrifically funny Chaplin could be. His Tramp finds himself taking care of an abandoned young boy (a wonderfully natural Jackie Coogan), and the pair get into a series of scraps and scrapes as they try to survive on the streets – echoes there of Chaplin’s own poverty-stricken childhood. Saturday 13 April, 1pm, Sky Arts

A stupendous, vertiginous profile of climber Alex Honnold, following him as he attempts the first ascent of a route on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in California without the aid of ropes or other protective equipment. It is an endeavour that requires long, meticulous planning, because any mistake could be fatal. It’s also a fraught process for the directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, who face the prospect of shooting the likable, reserved Honnold’s death. Yosemite’s stunning natural beauty contrasts with sweaty danger to nerve-jangling effect. Sunday 14 April, 10pm, BBC Two

Kyle (Aki Omoshaybi) and Jamie (Pippa Bennett-Warner) meet cute in a newsagent’s shop in Portsmouth, but their tentative, rather chaste romance faces several obstacles. Omoshaybi, also the writer-director, gives the evasive Kyle a criminal record and murky family past, and makes single mother Jamie a recovering alcoholic; both are struggling to find permanent jobs. With such precarious existences, the film asks, is there any room for love? The couple’s troubles are handled delicately, and have enough universality to hold our focus. Monday 15 April, 11.25pm, Film4

Silver Haze director Sacha Polak and actor Vicky Knight’s first collaboration was this moving 2019 film . Knight plays single mother Jade, who has extensive scarring following an acid attack by an ex-boyfriend. She tries to resume a normal life with her young daughter, mum Lisa (Katherine Kelly) and best friend Shami (Rebecca Stone) but struggles to adjust to her new physical reality, leading her down some dark paths. A drama of brutal candour in which newcomer Knight gives her all. Tuesday 16 April, 11.15pm, BBC Two

A sci-fi comedy with a delightfully Japanese tinge, Junta Yamaguchi’s film traps the staff and guests of a wintry mountain inn in a two-minute time loop – though they remember everything. Waitress Mikoto (Riko Fujitani), professional politeness to the fore, takes it in her stride, trying to keep the customers satisfied. But other reactions vary from giddy relief (an author with writer’s block) to fury (a man stuck naked in a bath), as order breaks down and impulse takes over. It’s fast-paced fun, but there is space left to ponder whether pausing your life briefly is a restorative or mere avoidance of reality. Thursday 18 April, 11.25pm, Film4

Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver

Zack Snyder’s space opera , which mashes up tropes from Star Wars and Seven Samurai, returns to wrap things up (possibly). Sofia Boutella’s Kora brings back the ragtag group of warriors she sourced in the first instalment to the farming settlement imperiled by imperial forces. It’s ploughshares into swords for the outnumbered moonfolk and their handlers – a fine supporting cast including the likes of Bae Doona and Djimon Hounsou – with a resurrected Ed Skrein bringing the sneering evil as Kora’s principal military foe, Atticus Noble. Friday 19 April, Netflix

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Blackberry (2023) review / dir. Matt Johnson Middle Class Film Class

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The gang goes to Waterloo.... where the vampires hang out, this week as they review the latest from writer/director Matt Johnson, Blackberry (2023). Released as a standalone movie in theaters early in 2023, then later re-released that same year as a limited series on Hulu with 16 additional minutes added, Blackberry tells the story of the rise and eventual fall of the Blackberry, from Canadian tech company Research in Motion. Watch the theatrical cut on AMC+ and the limited series on Hulu right now, then weigh in along with Pete, Joseph, and guest host Javier... who also picked the movie, and is the original Cool-ass Yard Duty on Patreon. Thanks Javier! Next week’s movie is unrentable, and unstreamable. Watch it below. https://youtu.be/_rbIrnnZBLc?si=C-Kx2v3nUhB4zDwF https://youtu.be/WjBhzTbwRzQ?si=0X1tt93cH2Sp4HjP Visit the YouTube channel Saturdays @ 12:30 PM Pacific to get in on the live stream! Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI1lVsk1xjMSBgZK82uAzgQ This Episode: https://youtu.be/NNCVN4WT59Y http://www.MCFCpodcast.com https://www.twitch.tv/MCFCpodcast http://www.facebook.com/MCFCpodcast http://www.twitter.com/podcastMCFC http://www.tiktok.com/middleclassfilmclass http://www.instagram.com/middleclassfilmclass    Email: [email protected] Leave us a voicemail at (209) 730-6010 Merch store - https://middle-class-film-class.creator-spring.com/      Join the Patreon: www.patreon.con/middleclassfilmclass   Patrons: Javier Joel Shinneman Linda McCalister Heather Sachs https://twitter.com/DorkOfAllDorks Ryan  Corbin Chris Geiger Dylan Mitch Burns  Robert Stewart  Jason Andrew Martin  Dallas Terry  Jack Fitzpatrick  Mackenzie Miner Binge Daddy Dan  Joseph Navarro      Pete Abeyta   and Tyler Noe

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BlackBerry -CWEB Official Cinema Trailer and Movie Review HD IFC Films

“BlackBerry” is a riveting dive into the tumultuous world of early smartphone innovation, expertly helmed by director Matt Johnson. Set against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving industry dominated by brilliant yet immature visionaries, the film captures the chaotic energy of a landscape where success hinges on ruthless ambition and technical prowess.

At its core, “BlackBerry” revolves around the unlikely duo of Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and Doug Fregin (Matt Johnson), the endearing nerds whose revolutionary tech designs are overshadowed by their lack of business acumen. Constantly bullied by clients and struggling to navigate the cutthroat capitalist system, they find themselves teetering on the brink of failure.

Enter Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), a formidable executive with a penchant for hockey and a knack for manipulation. Balsillie recognizes the potential in Lazaridis and Fregin’s creations and seizes the opportunity to propel himself to the top by offering to lead their company to newfound success.

The film hurtles through the company’s meteoric rise, deftly condensing the highs and lows of its journey into electrifying montages. Drawing from Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff’s book “Losing The Signal,” “BlackBerry” paints a gripping portrait of ambition, betrayal, and the relentless pursuit of innovation.

Jay Baruchel and Matt Johnson deliver standout performances, infusing their characters with depth and vulnerability amidst the whirlwind of corporate intrigue. Glenn Howerton is utterly compelling as the domineering Balsillie, radiating charisma and menace in equal measure.

“BlackBerry” is more than just a historical account of a tech giant’s ascent; it’s a poignant exploration of the human cost of ambition and the perils of unchecked power. Johnson’s deft direction and the stellar performances of its cast make it a must-watch for anyone fascinated by the intersection of technology and corporate drama.

This movie is a “ Web Fans ” must-see.

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

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‘Civil War’ Review: We Have Met the Enemy and It Is Us. Again.

In Alex Garland’s tough new movie, a group of journalists led by Kirsten Dunst, as a photographer, travels a United States at war with itself.

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‘Civil War’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The writer and director alex garland narrates a sequence from his film..

“My name is Alex Garland and I’m the writer director of ‘Civil War’. So this particular clip is roughly around the halfway point of the movie and it’s these four journalists and they’re trying to get, in a very circuitous route, from New York to DC, and encountering various obstacles on the way. And this is one of those obstacles. What they find themselves stuck in is a battle between two snipers. And they are close to one of the snipers and the other sniper is somewhere unseen, but presumably in a large house that sits over a field and a hill. It’s a surrealist exchange and it’s surrounded by some very surrealist imagery, which is they’re, in broad daylight in broad sunshine, there’s no indication that we’re anywhere near winter in the filming. In fact, you can kind of tell it’s summer. But they’re surrounded by Christmas decorations. And in some ways, the Christmas decorations speak of a country, which is in disrepair, however silly it sounds. If you haven’t put away your Christmas decorations, clearly something isn’t going right.” “What’s going on?” “Someone in that house, they’re stuck. We’re stuck.” “And there’s a bit of imagery. It felt like it hit the right note. But the interesting thing about that imagery was that it was not production designed. We didn’t create it. We actually literally found it. We were driving along and we saw all of these Christmas decorations, basically exactly as they are in the film. They were about 100 yards away, just piled up by the side of the road. And it turned out, it was a guy who’d put on a winter wonderland festival. People had not dug his winter wonderland festival, and he’d gone bankrupt. And he had decided just to leave everything just strewn around on a farmer’s field, who was then absolutely furious. So in a way, there’s a loose parallel, which is the same implication that exists within the film exists within real life.” “You don’t understand a word I say. Yo. What’s over there in that house?” “Someone shooting.” “It’s to do with the fact that when things get extreme, the reasons why things got extreme no longer become relevant and the knife edge of the problem is all that really remains relevant. So it doesn’t actually matter, as it were, in this context, what side they’re fighting for or what the other person’s fighting for. It’s just reduced to a survival.”

By Manohla Dargis

A blunt, gut-twisting work of speculative fiction, “Civil War” opens with the United States at war with itself — literally, not just rhetorically. In Washington, D.C., the president is holed up in the White House; in a spookily depopulated New York, desperate people wait for water rations. It’s the near-future, and rooftop snipers, suicide bombers and wild-eyed randos are in the fight while an opposition faction with a two-star flag called the Western Forces, comprising Texas and California — as I said, this is speculative fiction — is leading the charge against what remains of the federal government. If you’re feeling triggered, you aren’t alone.

It’s mourning again in America, and it’s mesmerizingly, horribly gripping. Filled with bullets, consuming fires and terrific actors like Kirsten Dunst running for cover, the movie is a what-if nightmare stoked by memories of Jan. 6. As in what if the visions of some rioters had been realized, what if the nation was again broken by Civil War, what if the democratic experiment called America had come undone? If that sounds harrowing, you’re right. It’s one thing when a movie taps into childish fears with monsters under the bed; you’re eager to see what happens because you know how it will end (until the sequel). Adult fears are another matter.

In “Civil War,” the British filmmaker Alex Garland explores the unbearable if not the unthinkable, something he likes to do. A pop cultural savant, he made a splashy zeitgeist-ready debut with his 1996 best seller “The Beach,” a novel about a paradise that proves deadly, an evergreen metaphor for life and the basis for a silly film . That things in the world are not what they seem, and are often far worse, is a theme that Garland has continued pursuing in other dark fantasies, first as a screenwriter (“ 28 Days Later ”), and then as a writer-director (“ Ex Machina ”). His résumé is populated with zombies, clones and aliens, though reliably it is his outwardly ordinary characters you need to keep a closer watch on.

By the time “Civil War” opens, the fight has been raging for an undisclosed period yet long enough to have hollowed out cities and people’s faces alike. It’s unclear as to why the war started or who fired the first shot. Garland does scatter some hints; in one ugly scene, a militia type played by a jolting, scarily effective Jesse Plemons asks captives “what kind of American” they are. Yet whatever divisions preceded the conflict are left to your imagination, at least partly because Garland assumes you’ve been paying attention to recent events. Instead, he presents an outwardly and largely post-ideological landscape in which debates over policies, politics and American exceptionalism have been rendered moot by war.

‘Civil War’ Is Designed to Disturb You

One thing that remains familiar amid these ruins is the movie’s old-fashioned faith in journalism. Dunst, who’s sensational, plays Lee, a war photographer who works for Reuters alongside her friend, a reporter, Joel (the charismatic Wagner Moura). They’re in New York when you meet them, milling through a crowd anxiously waiting for water rations next to a protected tanker. It’s a fraught scene; the restless crowd is edging into mob panic, and Lee, camera in hand, is on high alert. As Garland’s own camera and Joel skitter about, Lee carves a path through the chaos, as if she knows exactly where she needs to be — and then a bomb goes off. By the time it does, an aspiring photojournalist, Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), is also in the mix.

The streamlined, insistently intimate story takes shape once Lee, Joel, Jessie and a veteran reporter, Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), pile into a van and head to Washington. Joel and Lee are hoping to interview the president (Nick Offerman), and Sammy and Jessie are riding along largely so that Garland can make the trip more interesting. Sammy serves as a stabilizing force (Henderson fills the van with humanizing warmth), while Jessie plays the eager upstart Lee takes under her resentful wing. It’s a tidily balanced sampling that the actors, with Garland’s banter and via some cozy downtime, turn into flesh-and-blood personalities, people whose vulnerability feeds the escalating tension with each mile.

As the miles and hours pass, Garland adds diversions and hurdles, including a pair of playful colleagues, Tony and Bohai (Nelson Lee and Evan Lai), and some spooky dudes guarding a gas station. Garland shrewdly exploits the tense emptiness of the land, turning strangers into potential threats and pretty country roads into ominously ambiguous byways. Smartly, he also recurrently focuses on Lee’s face, a heartbreakingly hard mask that Dunst lets slip brilliantly. As the journey continues, Garland further sketches in the bigger picture — the dollar is near-worthless, the F.B.I. is gone — but for the most part, he focuses on his travelers and the engulfing violence, the smoke and the tracer fire that they often don’t notice until they do.

Despite some much-needed lulls (for you, for the narrative rhythm), “Civil War” is unremittingly brutal or at least it feels that way. Many contemporary thrillers are far more overtly gruesome than this one, partly because violence is one way unimaginative directors can put a distinctive spin on otherwise interchangeable material: Cue the artful fountains of arterial spray. Part of what makes the carnage here feel incessant and palpably realistic is that Garland, whose visual approach is generally unfussy, doesn’t embellish the violence, turning it into an ornament of his virtuosity. Instead, the violence is direct, at times shockingly casual and unsettling, so much so that its unpleasantness almost comes as a surprise.

If the violence feels more intense than in a typical genre shoot ’em up, it’s also because, I think, with “Civil War,” Garland has made the movie that’s long been workshopped in American political discourse and in mass culture, and which entered wider circulation on Jan. 6. The raw power of Garland’s vision unquestionably owes much to the vivid scenes that beamed across the world that day when rioters, some wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “ MAGA civil war ,” swarmed the Capitol. Even so, watching this movie, I also flashed on other times in which Americans have relitigated the Civil War directly and not, on the screen and in the streets.

Movies have played a role in that relitigation for more than a century, at times grotesquely. Two of the most famous films in history — D.W. Griffith’s 1915 racist epic “The Birth of a Nation” (which became a Ku Klux Klan recruitment tool) and the romantic 1939 melodrama “Gone With the Wind” — are monuments to white supremacy and the myth of the Southern Lost Cause. Both were critical and popular hits. In the decades since, filmmakers have returned to the Civil War era to tell other stories in films like “Glory,” “Lincoln” and “Django Unchained” that in addressing the American past inevitably engage with its present.

There are no lofty or reassuring speeches in “Civil War,” and the movie doesn’t speak to the better angels of our nature the way so many films try to. Hollywood’s longstanding, deeply American imperative for happy endings maintains an iron grip on movies, even in ostensibly independent productions. There’s no such possibility for that in “Civil War.” The very premise of Garland’s movie means that — no matter what happens when or if Lee and the rest reach Washington — a happy ending is impossible, which makes this very tough going. Rarely have I seen a movie that made me so acutely uncomfortable or watched an actor’s face that, like Dunst’s, expressed a nation’s soul-sickness so vividly that it felt like an X-ray.

Civil War Rated R for war violence and mass death. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In theaters.

An earlier version of this review misidentified an organization in the Civil War in the movie. It is the Western Forces, not the Western Front.

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Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic for The Times. More about Manohla Dargis

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‘Challengers’ Review: Zendaya and Company Smash the Sports-Movie Mold in Luca Guadagnino’s Tennis Scorcher

Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist compete for a fellow player’s heart in a steamy and stylish love triangle from the director of 'Call Me by Your Name.'

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Anyone who’s ever played tennis knows the game starts with love and escalates fast. In Luca Guadagnino ’s hip, sexy and ridiculously overheated “ Challengers ,” the rivals are former doubles partners Art Donaldson ( Mike Faist ) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), best friends since the age of 12, who went their separate ways after both players fell for the same woman. Patrick got there first, but Art wound up marrying her — and their sense of competition has only intensified since.

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“I’m no homewrecker,” Tashi teases Art and Patrick the night they meet her, 13 years earlier. Constructed like a tennis competition, Justin Kuritzkes’ screenplay ricochets back and forth through time, asking us to pivot our brains the way audiences do at the movie’s opening challenger match. (In pro tennis, challenger events are like the minor leagues, where second-tier talents prove themselves.) This one frames the film, as Tashi seems torn between her husband and his old partner.

Watching from the stands, their legs splayed indecently wide, the pair ogle Tashi as the wind whips her short skirt up in the air. None of this is accidental: not the way Jonathan Anderson (as in J.W. Anderson, switching from catwalks to costume design in his first feature credit) showcases Zendaya’s gazelle-like legs, not the way DP Sayombhu Mukdeeprom frames the boys’ crotches, and certainly not the moment Patrick squeezes his pal’s leg as Tashi shows them how, at its most beautiful, the game can be an ecstatic experience.

Later that night, at an Adidas-sponsored party for Tashi, the guys take turns trying to get her number. They’re motivated by hormones. She’s more strategic (the sheer control involved in Zendaya’s performance is astonishing, transforming this would-be trophy into the one who sets the rules). “You don’t know what tennis is,” Tashi challenges Patrick, going on to explain, “It’s a relationship.” Lines like this, which spell everything out in blinking neon lights, run throughout Kuritzkes’ script. But Guadagnino’s execution is all about subtext, calibrating things such that body language speaks volumes.

The same goes for what promises to be the year’s hottest scene, back in the boys’ hotel room, as Tashi sits on the bed between the two and coaxes — or coaches — them to make out. “Challengers” is not a gay film per se, but it leaves things ambiguous enough that one could read it like Lukas Dhont’s recent “Close,” about a friendship so tight, the boys’ peers tease them for it.

Over the course of 131 minutes, “Challengers” volleys between what amounts to a romantic rematch and intimate earlier vignettes. At all times, even off-screen, Tashi remains the fulcrum. In the present, Art — whose torso shows signs of multiple surgeries — has been on a cold streak, which betrays a loss of passion for the game. Passion’s no problem for Patrick, who’s more confident in both his swing and his sexuality.

The film calls for intensely physical performances from the two male actors, who both appear wobbly and exhausted by the end. Faist (a Broadway star whom “West Side Story” introduced to moviegoers) has a relatively traditional character arc, patiently waiting his turn and evolving as the timeline progresses. O’Connor (whose smoldering turn in gay indie “God’s Own Country” got him cast on “The Crown”) comes across as animalistic and immature by comparison, as his bad-boy character refuses to grow up or give up.

Another filmmaker might have subtracted himself in order to foreground the story, whereas Guadagnino goes big, leading with style (and a trendy score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross). In keeping with the athletic theme, he does all kinds of wild things with the camera, including a composition framed from the umpire’s perspective mid-court that zooms along the net to find Tashi in the crowd. Occasionally, she and other characters smack the fluorescent yellow balls directly at the screen, making us flinch in our seats. By the end, “Challengers” has assumed the ball’s POV — or maybe it’s the racket’s — as Guadagnino immerses audiences in the film’s climactic match.

Far from your typical sports movie, “Challengers” is less concerned with the final score than with the ever-shifting dynamic between the players. The pressure mounts and the perspiration pours, as the pair once known as “Fire and Ice” face off again. Whether audiences identify as Team Patrick or Team Art, Guadagnino pulls a risky yet effective trick, essentially scoring the winning shot himself.

Reviewed at AMC Century City 15, Los Angeles, April 9, 2024. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 131 MIN.

• Production: Amazon MGM presentation of a Why Are You Acting?, Frenesy Films, Pascal Pictures production. Producers: Amy Pascal, Luca Guadagnino, Zendaya, Rachel O’Connor. Executive producers: Bernard Bellew, Lorenzo Mieli, Kevin Ulrich.
• Crew: Director: Luca Guadagnino. Camera: Sayonbhu Mukdeeprom. Editor: Marco Costa. Music: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross. Music supervisor: Robin Urdang.
• With: Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist.

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