Steve Jobs

Based on Walter Isaacson’s autobiography, Steve Jobs details the circumstances surrounding three key product launches in the title character’s career: the Macintosh, the NeXT computer, and the iMac. It’s perhaps not surprising to note, given that its screenplay is by Aaron Sorkin, that Steve Jobs suffers from a relentlessly verbose atmosphere, with Sorkin’s unique (and always-recognizable) writing essentially resulting in a pervasive lack of authenticity to both the situations and the characters themselves (ie there’s just never a point, in terms of the latter, at which the characters become more than mouthpieces for Sorkin’s stylized dialogue). The viewer’s efforts to embrace the slow-moving narrative fall hopelessly flat on an ongoing basis, with the inside-baseball approach to the material preventing one from embracing the characters and ensuring that certain sequences come off as dry and incomprehensible (including a seemingly endless technology meeting between Michael Fassbender’s Jobs and Jeff Daniels’ John Sculley). There’s little doubt, too, that Sorkin’s attempts at developing the fractured relationship between Jobs and his illegitimate daughter prove unsuccessful, to say the least, and it goes without saying that the emotional resonance of such moments, particularly towards the end, is virtually non-existent. It’s ultimately the uniformly strong performances that prevent the viewer from checking out entirely, with Fassbender’s often mesmerizing turn as the troubled protagonist mirrored by a strong supporting cast that includes Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, and Michael Stuhlbarg. The end result is a flat drama that works only as a showcase for several fine performances, which is disappointing, to be sure, given the dynamic and eventful nature of Jobs’ life and career.

** out of ****