Silk Road
Directed by: Tiller Russell
Written by: Tiller Russell - Based on the article by David Kushner
Starring: Nick Robinson, Jason Clarke, Alexandra Shipp, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Paul Walter Hauser, Jimmi Simpson, Katie Aselton, Will Ropp, Daniel David Stewart, David DeLao, Lexi Rabe, Raleigh Cain
Crime/Drama/Thriller - 112 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 18 Feb 2021
Written by: Tiller Russell - Based on the article by David Kushner
Starring: Nick Robinson, Jason Clarke, Alexandra Shipp, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Paul Walter Hauser, Jimmi Simpson, Katie Aselton, Will Ropp, Daniel David Stewart, David DeLao, Lexi Rabe, Raleigh Cain
Crime/Drama/Thriller - 112 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 18 Feb 2021
Silk Road’s two protagonists spout their respective manifestos throughout the film and neither particularly concern the pros and cons of the notorious narcotic-peddling website. Ross Ulbricht (Nick Robinson, Jurassic World), the website’s creator, is a libertarian and he really wants you to know that. He believes the government has no right to tell the individual what they can and cannot do. You want to OD? That’s your God given right. However, your rights end when you start hurting other people, so no guns or stolen credit card numbers on Silk Road…until there are. Every time you conduct a transaction through an outside market not the government, you weaken them. Eh…
One would expect DEA Agent Rick Bowden’s cause to either advocate the opposing viewpoint or at least reflect Ross’s position in some cheeky way. Nope. Agent Bowden (Jason Clarke, Zero Dark Thirty) hates millennials and their apps and Googles. He’s old school. Nothing can compare to experience and wisdom earned through turning calendar pages. Obsolescence and the inability to adapt are badges of honor. After his unwilling transfer to the Cyber Crimes Division from going undercover as a narc amongst cartels and kingpins, Agent Bowden follows a tutorial called “What is the Internet?” and cannot get past the section on how to left click the mouse. Horseshit. The film is set in 2011, not 1991. Find a less lazy way to show Bowden is a bit behind on tech.
One would expect DEA Agent Rick Bowden’s cause to either advocate the opposing viewpoint or at least reflect Ross’s position in some cheeky way. Nope. Agent Bowden (Jason Clarke, Zero Dark Thirty) hates millennials and their apps and Googles. He’s old school. Nothing can compare to experience and wisdom earned through turning calendar pages. Obsolescence and the inability to adapt are badges of honor. After his unwilling transfer to the Cyber Crimes Division from going undercover as a narc amongst cartels and kingpins, Agent Bowden follows a tutorial called “What is the Internet?” and cannot get past the section on how to left click the mouse. Horseshit. The film is set in 2011, not 1991. Find a less lazy way to show Bowden is a bit behind on tech.
Writer and director Tiller Russell gives both Ross and Bowden one half of the film. They begin far apart and are meant to collide at the end, almost as if destiny brought them together. Russell even incorporates severely unnecessary freeze frame, fade out edits when the film returns to Bowden from Ross. The after school high school special feeling this evokes detracts from all of Russell’s manifestos he believes are so epic they warrant this kind of “look at me” editing. Also, it may take another documentary on this subject to parse out what is true, what is composite, and what is actually Russell’s autobiography. Bowden is a composite character made up of some corrupt cops involved in the Silk Road case and I can only assume most of Ross’s major website expositions are based on the historical record, but Russell says he filled in most of the gaps with his own story.
Ross tells his dad, his girlfriend (Alexandra Shipp, X-Men: Dark Phoenix), and anyone asking he is waiting for the “thing”. He quits multiple endeavors right before they take off because he can feel they are not the “thing”. When the idea for Silk Road pops into his head, he knows he is going to see this one through. He declares he will not leave his computer screen until he teaches himself to code. He mails drugs to himself through the United States Postal Service to see if it will work. The audience gets multiple explanations of The Onion Router and Bitcoin in case any of this starts to go over our heads. Since the intended audience for Silk Road are most likely Social Network and Zuckerberg acolytes, these layman conversations are probably superfluous.
Bowden is fresh out of rehab and a psychiatric ward. He snorted one too many lines during his last undercover gig and is on his last straw until retirement. He doesn’t know how to maneuver computers, despises his 26 year-old boss, misses using his badge and gun to scare street informants, and then enjoys a few montages as he starts to figure all this Bitcoin business out. His wife and daughter are his version of innocent victims in his new obsession just as Ross’s innocents are his increasingly nervous girlfriend and some news article subjects who can’t handle their mail order meth. Neither Ross nor Bowden engender too much sympathy from the audience and when the meandering road show finally wraps itself up and the closing words update on who is where now, I cared far less than the usual “ripped from the headlines” story. Only travel this Silk Road if you already know where it goes and are curious to see what a filmmaker chose to do with it.
Comment Box is loading comments...
