Silk Road

I had never heard of Silk Road until this movie came out. I read up on the actual events and it looks like they left out a bunch of the story. Evidently Ross Ulbricht put out hits on at least six more people. Not to mention, a second agent was arrested, Shaun Bridges, who worked on the same task force and ran an even more lucrative scheme. Each were apparently unaware of the other's illegal activities. Both agents received fairly light sentences. Ulbricht, not so much. He received two life sentences, pretty harsh for someone convicted of a none violent crime. Somehow he still has access to a computer. He posts on Twitter quite frequently.

This took an interesting story and turned it into a made for TV movie, a cornucopia of Hollywood cliches. First , there is the aging copper, dissed by the younger guys for his lack of tech ability,, but all done in such a harsh, over the top way it's not believable . There are multiple scenes with the main cop's little girl , and she and the mom are all boo hoo about him not being around because he works long hours. If it was up to Hollywood writers every pediatric cardiac surgeon would work a 32 hour week and be able to bring his kid to work, and any late cases would just have to wait, cardiac tamponade be damned. They also imply middle class cops should pay 35 k per for pre school. There is the mixed race girl friend, the rich best friend, the rude hispanic boss and the Ivy educated sounding PI. One character is less believable than the next, and the story unfolds in a boring way.

This makes The Social Network look like a documentary. I could forgive the use of creative license if the story wasn't so poorly mashed together.

Maybe I'm biased because Nick Bilton's book was so good but short of some decent acting there's little here to make it an enjoyable watch, let alone a half true retelling of the actual events.

The main reason to watch this is you'll learn all the important things about Silk Road and the founder. The movie itself was kind of silly, it took every cliche imaginable and incorporated that into the script. I wish this movie was made with a higher caliber director who could have done the story more justice. Watch it for the info not the entertainment.

I wish they had stuck to the original story. The corrupted FBI agent was one narrative and the scammer was another. They just mixed everything up in an over-dramatized & cliched way. I have consumed so much of Ross's story to know this could have been done better.