You probably remember that there was a very popular smartphone called BlackBerry before iPhone and many other smartphones. To be frank with you, I never used BlackBerry because I stuck to my small cellular phone during that time although I saw it from movies and TV from time to time. When I eventually move onto Samsung smartphone along with my family in 2013, BlackBerry was already being pushed out by other smartphones, and now it becomes an artifact of the early 2000s at present.

Matt Johnson’s third feature film “BlackBerry” presents the dramatic story of how BlackBerry rose and then fell during the 2000s, and it splendidly works as an ironic cautionary tale on ambition and hubris. Sure, the company behind BlackBerry would have gone nowhere if it had not had someone to push itself much further, but that person in question also turned out to one of the main factors in its eventual downfall later, and there is certainly a rich irony in that.

The movie, which is mainly set in Waterloo, Canada, opens with an accidental meeting in 1996 between an ambitious businessman named Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton) and the two young nerdy co-founders of Research in Motion (RIM): Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and Doug Fregin (Matt Johnson). While Lazaridis and Fregin initially do not impress Balsillie much mainly due to their clumsy presentation on their new cellular device called “PocketLink”, Balsillie subsequently come to see some potential from PocketLink, and he decided to go all the way for RIM not long after getting fired from his company.

Although Balsillie demands to Lazaridis and Fregin that they should hire him as the co-CEO of the company first, Lazaridis, who is incidentally the current CEO of RIM, eventually agrees to accept Balsillie’s demand despite some initial hesitation. After all, RIM is on the verge of bankruptcy because of Lazaridis and Fregin’s bumbling mismanagement, and it surely needs a guy willing to bring some constructive changes into the company right now, which feels pretty much like your average fraternity house for nerdy boys.

And Balsillie does the job as much as expected. After doing some aggressive reorganization inside RIM, he makes Lazaridis and other technicians focus more on the development of PocketLink, which is renamed later as, of course, “BlackBerry”. Thanks to Balsillie’s savvy business tactics, RIM eventually succeeds in drawing the attention from the executives of Bell Atlantic, which is also known as Verizon. in US, and, what do you know, BlackBerry subsequently becomes a new hot electronic device to buy once it comes out in 1999.

The second half of the screenplay by Johnson and his co-writer/producer Matthew Miller, which is based on Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff’s nonfiction book “Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry”, jumps forward to when the company becomes much bigger and richer in the early 2000s. While Fregin remains your typical nerd just like many of his colleagues in the company, Lazaridis becomes a bit savvier as influenced more by Balsillie, and both he and Balsillie are quite confident about the future of their company.

However, their company soon begins to have one big trouble after another. When RIM confronts the impending possibility of the hostile takeover by some bigger American company, Balsillie pushes RIM toward selling much more BlackBerrys in US for blocking that possibility, but this aggressive business tactic of his leads to a disastrous outcome which irrevocably tarnishes the reputation of the company. Moreover, Steve Jobs and his Apple company suddenly surpass RIM with, yes, iPhone in 2007, and that certainly makes Lazaridis and other technicians in the company all the more nervous.

Quite intoxicated with his big success, Balsillie is more occupied with buying a NHL (National Hockey Leagues) team, so Lazaridis has to handle this immediate problem for himself. Not so surprisingly, he quickly finds himself under a situation way over his head – especially when US SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) begins to investigate the company.

Under Johnson’s competent direction, the story smoothly rolls toward its predestined finale, and Johnson also draws good performances from his two fellow cast members. While Jay Baruchel successfully dials down his comic image for his usually subdued character, Johnson functions well as a goofy but surprisingly sensible counterpart to Baruchel’s character, and Glenn Howerton, who has also been mainly known for comic performances like Baruchel, is palpably intense and aggressive in what may be regarded as a breakthrough turn in his acting career. While his character is pretty unlikable to say the least, Howerton presents his character as a fascinating case study to observe with some dark amusement, and he certainly energizes the movie whenever he enters the screen.

“BlackBerry” is another recent entrepreneur movie about famous product after “Air” (2023) and “Tetris” (2023), but it is one of more enjoyable ones thanks to its solid storytelling and entertaining performances. Although I have no idea on how much the movie actually embellishes its real-life story, the overall result is quite engaging on the whole, and it will probably be remembered more than BlackBerry itself in the future.