Tiller Russell’s new thriller Silk Road tells the story of Ross Ulbricht and the unregulated, almost-anything-goes market he created on the dark web. The real-life story of Silk Road is a gangster tale set in cyberspace — a little bit Blade Runner, a little bit Goodfellas. When Ulbricht (Nick Robinson) makes his entrance on a San Francisco sidewalk in the opening frames of the film, we’re even treated to some voice-over narration — Ulbricht shares his inner thoughts and philosophies à la Henry Hill in Goodfellas.
But in actuality, this isn’t Goodfellas or Blade Runner. Silk Road is a story of high crime on the high seas of vast digital content, and you could call it a Captain Blood for the 21st century. But that’s not exactly right either. Silk Road feels like a missed opportunity, but thanks to its talented cast it’s still a fun watch.
Russell’s version of the story is a cat-and-mouse game that pits Ulbricht against the “Jurassic Narc” — DEA agent Rick Bowden, played with raging pathos by Jason Clarke. Bowden is a self-described “door-kicker” cop with his own drug and alcohol problem, and his bad behavior nearly costs him his job before he’s reassigned to a cybercrimes unit. Meanwhile, Ulbricht dreams up the super-secret Silk Road drug bazaar, and the two are set on a collision course. I enjoyed all of the performances here. Robinson’s dialog as Ulbricht is packed with exhausting exposition, but the actor somehow manages to beam his natural charisma through the bad scripting. Agent Bowden embodies nearly every grizzled-cop cliché you can imagine, but Clarke knows these muttering, physical character types so well that he’s fun to watch even if you can predict his every move. Darrell Brit-Gibson is hilarious as Bowden’s perpetually stoned informant, and Paul Walter Hauser almost steals the movie with his turn as one of the Silk Road site’s most prolific pushers.
Russell’s Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer series on Netflix has been embraced by audiences and critics partly because Russell brings a unique vision to his true-crime series illuminating the killing spree of Richard Ramirez, aka the Night Stalker. Russell’s documentary series highlights lesser-known aspects of Ramirez’s crimes, and keeps its focus on the families of victims and the police who captured the killer. Russell’s Silk Road script has a lot of heavy lifting to do when it comes to filling out Ulbricht’s anti-authority worldview alongside the byzantine machinations of cryptocrime on the dark web. But these fascinating subjects are why you make a film like this, even if they’re also where Russell’s film falls the flattest.
I can’t think of more timely topics than digital autonomy and privacy, ending the drug war, Bitcoin and the evolution of cryptocurrency, and individual liberty versus the authority of the state. But Silk Road squanders this moment — and this complex, stranger-than-fiction story — to bring us a talented cast walking through a lazy script. It’s a fun flick that delivers more genuine humor than I expected, but nearly none of the deep exploration this story deserves.
