I was one of only a few critics who genuinely appreciated “Jobs”, the 2013 biopic on legendary Apple CEO Steve Jobs, starring Ashton Kutcher. A little more than two years later, Hollywood tackles the complicated mind of one of the most fascinating technological pioneers of all-time yet again with “Steve Jobs”. And this time they’ve tripled the RAM, with Aaron Sorkin (“The Social Network”) penning the script, Danny Boyle (“Slumdog Millionaire”) directing and Michael Fassbender (“12 Years a Slave”) playing the title character.
The powerhouse team chose not to go the traditional life-story biopic route, instead sculpting their film using three 40-minute periods from three separate days of Jobs’ life: product launch days in 1984, 1988 and 1998. These pivotal and highly-stressful events provide a unique look at Jobs both as multimillionaire company head and simple human being, with more relationship problems that you can count. He is an imperfect genius, unable to relate to practically everyone around him. Jobs publicly and psychologically denied he was the father to young Lisa and completely disapproved of acknowledging the work of those who helped him get to where he is, specifically co-Apple creator and presumed friend Steve Wozniak (it’s hard to say, from this portrayal, that Jobs had any true friends).
Woz is played by Seth Rogen, who gives the most memorable and dramatic performance of his career, going toe-to-toe with Fassbender in some great, showy scenes. Jeff Daniels plays former Apple CEO John Scully. At one point, he and Jobs debate how Steve’s controversial exit from Apple really went down. This is the only scene in the movie that features the wild, rapid-fire dialogue Sorkin is known for. The rest of the screenplay has a more tolerable pace and features some sharp, sarcastic and insightful (albeit, at times, cutesy) lines.
Fassbender is excellent, with a commanding presence in all three “mini-movies”. The best performance in “Steve Jobs” comes from Kate Winslet as marketing executive and Jobs’ longtime right-hand-woman Joanna Hoffman. Winslet pours restrained emotion into every scene and it’s her arc (including how she feels about Jobs’ strained relationship with his daughter) that is the core of the film. In what’s already shaping-up to be another highly competitive Awards Season, Winslet should be a lock for Best Supporting Actress nominations.
Unfortunately, “Steve Jobs” suffers from a few small but noticeable bugs in its operating system that prevent it from reaching the status of one of the best movies of the year. The similarities in style, storytelling and execution to last year’s “Birdman” are evident. But, unlike with that film, Boyle and Sorkin aren’t brave enough to let the three parts play-out themselves. The addition of awkward flashbacks (including “younger-looking” Fassbender and Rogen working in their garage), as well as “here’s what’s happened since” narration and news clips in between each section, are only included to help move the audience along, but are totally unnecessary, dumbing-down the overall narrative. Simply letting these stories happen in real-time, without these distractions and some heavy-handed symbolism (the final scene is clumsy and should have been deleted altogether), would’ve resulted in a much more powerful finished product.
On The Official LCJ Report Card, “Steve Jobs” gets a B+.
Running Time: 122 min.