Aside from her remarkable name, though, Winner’s story didn’t seem obviously cinematic. Winner's sentence was the longest ever imposed in federal court for a leak of government information to the media. In 2018, when it was reported that Reality Winner, a 26 year-old Air Force linguist and intelligence contractor, had been sentenced to five years and three months of prison time for leaking a classified report about Russian interference in the 2016 election, her case was notable. No matter how big these men’s invention gets, they always seem quite small, destined to be munched up by bigger world-changers. Instead, it’s a movie that knocks wild ambition down a peg. Blackberry isn’t a film that valorizes business, nor is it one that sinks its teeth all that deep. But what’s so beautiful about Johnson’s film–in addition to all the dynamic performances and moments of hilarity–is that in spending the final act on the company’s fall, the director shows how ephemeral these sorts of products are. He bluffs, he yells, he whips the ragtag group into shape, and pretty soon their device catches fire.
They’re not taken seriously, until a raging, recently fired businessman named Jim Balsillie (a movie-stealing Glenn Howerton) comes on board. A group of nerds, led by Mike Lazaridis (a pitch-perfect Jay Baruchel) and his bombastic best friend Doug (Johnson), has created a device–a phone… that does computing!–that the world isn’t ready for. For as long as I can remember, we’ve been inundated with stories of guys inventing things in garages that will “change the world.” The beginning of Matt Johnson’s Blackberry resembles one of those stories, albeit with a quirkier tone and more jagged texture.
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