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.

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.

Silk Road is a story that can not be made up. If there was a smart person who got their hands on this project, this could have been another "Social Network" kind of movie - this was not that - Even from my little knowledge of the true events, half of the time I was like: "This is made up - this did not happen like this" - and if it was fun or better than what actually happened. I would have been fine.

This movie just left more questions unanswered than it actually answered. People who never heard of this story now have to go listen to the podcast to actually find out what happened. I feel like that is not a great thing.

My girlfriend liked it tho and will not care that they skipped a bunch of stuff, so 5/10 - average to great movie!

While the subject matter of this film is certainly intriguing, the execution leaves much to be desired. Rather than focusing on the main protagonist, the film spends an excessive amount of time on a peripheral character, the cop. As a result, the heart of the story is lost, and the film ultimately falls short.

It's disappointing that the filmmakers chose to take a half-fictionalized approach to this topic. The subject matter is weighty and deserves a more serious treatment, perhaps in the form of a documentary. By trying to combine elements of both fiction and non-fiction, the film ends up feeling disjointed and unsatisfying.

Overall, while there are certainly interesting moments in the film, it ultimately fails to do justice to its subject matter. A more focused, documentary-style approach may have been more appropriate for this particular story.

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.