Sorkin's Screenplay Sizzles

Rating: 8/10 (20 September 2016)

A crackerjack screenplay by Aaron Sorkin and good performances by a talented cast led by Michael Fassbender are the biggest assets of "Steve Jobs."
Danny Boyle, one of my least favorite directors, shows an unusual amount of restraint in telling this biographical story about Steve Jobs' firing and subsequent return to Apple. The film is not a standard biopic, for which I was eternally grateful. This is not the life story of Jobs, but rather selected episodes from his meteoric rise, fall, and rise again set against the backdrop of various product launches. The film isn't based on a play, but it wouldn't have surprised me if it had been. It takes place in few locations, most of them cramped interiors, and consists of verbal showdown after showdown, usually involving no more than two or three people. Indeed, the film does teeter on the brink of monotony at times -- the viewer feels like he's hearing the same argument for the third and fourth time by the film's end. But Sorkin's rapid fire, witty dialogue makes up adequately for any dramatic inertness in the screenplay, and the witty one-liners fly with the abandon of a screwball comedy, making the viewer pay attention if he wants to hear all the jokes. Sorkin reminds me of a modern-day Paddy Chayefsky. When Beatrice Straight accepted her Oscar for "Network," she thanked Chayefsky for writing thoughts that people always feel but can never articulate (I'm paraphrasing). That's what Sorkin does. He has his characters say the things you would want to be able to say if you were in the same situation.
Fassbender was justly Oscar-nominated for his performance, and now that I've actually seen all of the nominees in that category for that year, I think he should have won. Winslet also received her seventh nomination for playing Jobs' marketing director and his girl Friday.
Boyle resists the urge to direct the film to within an inch of its life, his predominant directorial style, and instead sits back and lets the screenplay and his actors do the heavy lifting. A wise decision.
Grade: A-