Based on actual events, BlackBerry explores the rapid rise and even more spectacular fall of the titular groundbreaking mobile device. The film zeroes in on the three Canadian business masterminds responsible for the company’s success, played by Jay Baruchel as Mike Lazaridis, Glenn Howerton (in a scene-stealing performance) as Jim Balsillie, and Matt Johnson as Douglas Fregin. In a combination of genius and pure dumb luck, their company Blackberry finds a niche in its technology, combining a cellular device and its capabilities of sending emails and texts that we today take for granted. This assumingly small Canadian technology company takes over the cellular market around Corporate America and the world, selling its multi-functional capabilities and its social status of coolness in a cutthroat market. Johnson delivers a witty, acerbic, and brilliantly offbeat screenplay (alongside Co-writer Matthew Miller). It is destined to be a tremendous career-changing opportunity for Johnson. He found the sweet spot of crafting a mainstream audience crown pleaser while remaining true to his creative sensibilities.

Howerton delivers one of the most unhinged performances of the year in a role that could’ve easily felt like a one-note caricature, as the ego-maniacal blowhole businessman fueled with a raucous attitude and egotistical aspirations taking advantage of his business partners without consultation. His work ethic fuels its immediate success and is partially the reason for its downfall outside of its inability to develop to compete with the iPhone, which fell into the company’s lap thanks to an abrupt career development. Jay Baruchel’s work here is surprisingly robust and remarkably sensitive but struggles in the scenes toward the final act set in 2008 once the film jumps ahead. It’s Baruchel’s most profound and demanding role as the inexperienced and socially awkward brains behind the operation. In some of his most emotionally charged scenes that are featured years later, he’s aged up in almost a comical sense parallel to the much subtler work of his actor counterparts and has a flared-up tantrum and monologue-filled outburst sequence toward the end against the aftermath of the iPhone launch that aims for max-cringe and uncomfortably but undersells on his delivery. The movie is captivating, but this thirst feels rushed and underdeveloped considering it has some of the film’s most engrossing content.

These nitpicks aside are not enough to sink the overall movie, which is pretty conventionally designed and structured, and shows with fittingly handheld techniques finished with sharp zooms—and overall feels like the winning Adam Mckay movie he’s always destined to create. Overall, Blackberry is a well-paced and well-conceived biopic that separates itself enough from the obvious anti-Social Network comparisons thanks to Matt Johnson’s singular filmmaking. [B+]