Product placement is nothing new in movies, but movies about those products themselves are a new trend. BlackBerry, Canadian director Matt Johnson’s new movie about the short-lived cellphone that had a long-lasting impact, is the latest entry into this strange new genre. And while it is not as rousing or crowd-pleasing as Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Air (the famous film duo’s new movie about the Air Jordan Nike sneaker), it is riveting in its own way.

Before Apple and Steve Jobs came along, BlackBerry was the first to win the mid-to-late ’90s race between multiple tech companies to create a gadget that would essentially marry the telephone with the email-capable computer. The product was far from sleek, but by the standards of its day, it was sophisticated. And more important, it was so user-friendly that parents didn’t need their children to teach them how to use it. At its height, BlackBerry controlled over 50% of the U.S. cellphone market and 20% of the global market. Today, it controls a whopping 0% of the cellphone market.