Silk Road

What the director and screenwriters did not understood is that Silk Road was at the time a big revolution: drugs that were always bought with physical cash transactions, with all risks for being caught on the spot by the police, finally moved to the hidden web, guaranteeing anonymous purchases from all around the world and having them delivered directly at home. The market became so important, that the website started to sell also other kind of products, and this in a little over two years, which is impressive. Nothing of this is portrayed in the movie, which focuses too much on things that does not matter at all. Why giving so much attention to Ulbricht and his girlfriend? Why giving so much space to Bowden? Everything is rushed to a point where certain part of the story are completely skipped: how the founder passed to sell just drugs, to also weapons and fake documents? We don't get to know.

Ulbricht is portrayed just like a clueless guy, that does not have any idea on how to handle his activity, which maybe was partially true, but let me tell you that a guy that he is able to build from the ground up a marketplace so big and important, is not for sure dumb. In fact he finished university and he obtained even a master. Why you did not show the craft of the website? How he came up with the name Silk Road? How he grew his business, which strategies he used? None of this apparently matter on the eyes of creators. We see instead a DEA agent that was transferred to the cybercrimes department, because he completely suck at his job and need just to work a few months to get the pension. We see him hanging around with his informant, that does most of the job that he is supposed to do. Absolutely ridiculous. Moreover is the classic cop that he is not able to understand that time changes and the job is different now, so he is basically the typical boomer, not able to accept having a younger boss, more experienced than him in IT, and he claims that the old way is always the best one. So cliché.

If you really want to make a movie about Silk Road, you should first of all really inform yourself, reading books and watching documentaries about the topic, making tons of research; understanding how this single website changed society, which were the consequences when was shut down and what inspired afterwards. The movie is incomplete, and made by people that clearly did not know anything about it. If you really want to know the true story, please go to watch "Deep Web", as it really explain what happened.

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.

Aside from the uninspired writing, I did enjoy watching Silk Road. Story is familiar to most; the story of the guy that created and run the illegal website via the tor network which was selling all kinds of illegal things online... parallel to that was the story of a corrupt cop who was after Silk Road.

The movie connects both stories and gives us a bit of the cliches that we are used to in this kind of fast-illegal-success story which ends up bad for the protagonist.

I don't have a particular interest about the clear depiction of this story and how truthful it was presented on screen; I m only interested in the quality of the film and how entertaining it was.

It is still just a film and not a documentary so adjust your expectations.

Overall, it's an interesting film to watch on a sleepless night or on a Saturday afternoon and get an idea of the Silk Road story. Also Jason Clarke gives a decent performance here as the cop and makes this film a tad more interesting. However, the writing could have been much better and create a background for the ideological base of the protagonist. Also the dialogues are dull at times and the editing is not helping either. Maybe some more info on the way he created Silk Road would be more interesting for the viewer and also the way he hid himself and the website from the authorities for that long. There are indeed mentions on all the above throughout the film, but they r brushed off rather fast.

The backbone of the story is nevertheless interesting, so if you start this film, you ll probably stick to it wanting to see how it's gonna play out, even if you kinda know how... Mildly interesting and entertaining, 6/10.

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.