We start in 1996 where deep-thinking and softly spoken CEO of RIM, Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel), and his ultra-geeky good friend and co-founder, Doug Fregin (Matthew Johnson), arrive in a very disorganised manner to pitch the idea for a brand new mobile communicator they've named PocketLink to a seemingly distracted businessman, Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton) in his office at a local manufacturing company. Due to a combination of their unpreparedness and Jim's focus being on another project presentation within his own firm, the pitch is unsuccessful. Mike leaves his business card anyway.
Licking their wounds, Doug and Mike head back to RIM HQ - a messy workshop of tech in various stages of disassembly and populated by a dozen or more tee-shirted geeky guys who collectively treat the place more like a frat house rather than a place of work. Seemingly not much later that day, suited and booted Jim arrives unexpectedly in their workshop. Stating he's had second thoughts, he has a proposition for RIM so takes Mike and Doug out for an impromptu business lunch.
His totally no-nonsense persona is front and centre as he offers to invest 20,000 Canadian Dollars in their company and promote the PocketLink device. Fregin convinces Lazaridis
initially to decline the offer as he hates the overly aggressive approach of Balsillie. The lunch ends abruptly but later, back at the workshop, Mike is staring at a huge pile of boxed unsold modems initially developed for USRobotics but was declined. This $1.6 million black hole for RIM weighs on his mind and he takes out Balsillie's card that he left at the restaurant.
initially to decline the offer as he hates the overly aggressive approach of Balsillie. The lunch ends abruptly but later, back at the workshop, Mike is staring at a huge pile of boxed unsold modems initially developed for USRobotics but was declined. This $1.6 million black hole for RIM weighs on his mind and he takes out Balsillie's card that he left at the restaurant.
This film packs a lot of history into just 2 hours and it felt like the story of BlackBerry was doomed from the very beginning. Wrapped up in the development of their devices, Mike and Doug seem to be totally oblivious as to what's really going on in their company and as a result, the dysfunctional relationship between Balsillie and RIM is chaotic, to say the least. From hiring engineers from other high profile software companies with dodgy contracts to secretly pursuing a future career at the NHL (National Hockey League) as a backup plan.
Jim never appreciates the people that create the tech, including Mike and Doug, and doesn't take any time to really understand how it functions. Changing the work regimes of their software engineers, he bullies everyone that doesn't do what he says and swears at them in almost every conversation. As a result, this film has been given a (15) Certificate. The acting overall is solid and although I found the film easy to watch, the environments portrayed are uncomfortable enough to make me happy that I never pursued a corporate office-based career.
I'm guessing that in the mid 1990's lots of software companies in North America may have had that initial laid-back environment and some have disappeared before they'd even got started but here, the addition of the ruthless business tactics of Balsillie seemed to be the ingredient that allowed BlackBerry to briefly shine - very brightly. However by 2007 a computer company based in California with another fruit-based name had a whole other direction to where the mobile communicating device was going.
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