A deep portrait of a flawed, lonely, but enigmatic man.

Rating: 10/10 (24 May 2019)

As a kid, I was always enamored by Steve Jobs' larger-than-life personality. I have owned multiple versions of the iPod, and I couldn't be more wowed by his genius. That was until the Isaacson biography came out, and whatever I'd read of that book (which is an excellent unbiased piece on the man, although for some reason I couldn't complete it), I did recognize Jobs' flaws.
After the disaster that was the Ashton Kutcher movie (although kudos to Kutcher for nailing the mannerisms), I really wanted this movie. I was hugely excited when I heard Fincher was in talks, and the Fincher-Sorkin duo has yielded an excellent result in the form of The Social Network. But the Sony hack said otherwise. Much later, when it was announced that Danny Boyle would take over (another director who's very accomplished in my opinion), I didn't think very highly of him as a director for this kind of movie.
The movie was a lot of fictionalized dialogue and situational drama. But what the dialogue contained was surely true. Steve Jobs has created such an enigmatic image around himself, that nobody needed to see a movie of his greatness in my honest opinion. Which is why I loved the structure of this movie, and how it expressed those flaws, albeit in fictional situations. Fassbender was a great, great Jobs, even though he didn't nail the look of the younger Steve Jobs. Kate Winslet was evergreen, she is just, well, phenomenal. Rogen as Woz was also surprisingly a good turn by the otherwise goofy actor, and he nailed the Woz vibe. The dialogue was as Sorkin-y as it could get - rapid fast exchanges, solid retorts and burns, and ultimately a lot of closure.
You see a Steve Jobs that started out as an immature person who said that 28% of American men could be his daughter's father. The gradual development of how he settled all of that was heartwarming to see. There's a lot of anguish in between, which is why it feels so good to see the movie end like that. He realizes that it isn't a binary, that he could be decent and gifted simultaneously. That's why I loved this movie. It made me have a little more respect for the flawed Jobs that I knew. Of course, a Fincher version might have been better, but I'm not complaining. I thoroughly enjoyed what Boyle brought to the table. 9.5/10.