A very entertaining account of the rise and fall of the BlackBerry line of mobile phones over 1996-2007, at its best when it highlights the inevitable rub between engineering and management, and the need for each to make a successful company. I really enjoyed the story despite being triggered at times, and thought the performances and storytelling were excellent. The casting was a highlight even in the smaller roles of the engineers, who certainly had the requisite look and feel of a nerdy engineering team with an informal culture in this period.
However, I couldn't help but be troubled by the significant distortion of the characters of the three men at the heart of the story - Mike Lazaridis, Doug Fregin, and Jim Balsillie - each of whom were turned into cartoon characters for entertainment value (and I say that despite having loved Glenn Howerton here). It's just a movie, not a documentary, but I think Matt Johnson went too far, as much as I admired some of the other things he did. I also thought the digs at Chinese manufacturing were lazy and a tad xenophobic, conveniently overlooking the myriad other companies successfully making such an arrangement work (ironically, such as Apple), and not considering RIM's own culpability in why they had failures at the end.
Overall, if seeing this little bit of pre-iPhone history is of interest, and if the overly amplified characterizations don't bother you, then you'll probably like this film.
However, I couldn't help but be troubled by the significant distortion of the characters of the three men at the heart of the story - Mike Lazaridis, Doug Fregin, and Jim Balsillie - each of whom were turned into cartoon characters for entertainment value (and I say that despite having loved Glenn Howerton here). It's just a movie, not a documentary, but I think Matt Johnson went too far, as much as I admired some of the other things he did. I also thought the digs at Chinese manufacturing were lazy and a tad xenophobic, conveniently overlooking the myriad other companies successfully making such an arrangement work (ironically, such as Apple), and not considering RIM's own culpability in why they had failures at the end.
Overall, if seeing this little bit of pre-iPhone history is of interest, and if the overly amplified characterizations don't bother you, then you'll probably like this film.