The precipitous rise and calamitous fall of the world’s first smartphone – the device you had before you got an iPhone, as one-character quips – is recounted in Matt Johnson’s breathlessly paced, insightful, wryly amusing, and wholly engrossing film which comfortably holds its own against the glossier, similarly themed The Social Network.

The story begins in 1996, when borderline psychotic businessman Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton) arrives at Research in Motion, a meagre operation based in a room above a bagel shop in Waterloo, Ontario, with a proposal to flog to an unsuspecting market the new-fangled gadget developed by introspective tech wizard Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel). These two utterly different men, one a swaggering bully and the other an absorbed visionary, join forces in what will swiftly become a world-altering endeavour.

Notes by David O’Mahony