Silk Road (Tiller Russell, 2021) is the story of Ross Ulbricht’s (Nick Robinson) rise to infamy as the founder of the website of the same name. Starting out as an outlet for anonymous online shopping, it quickly becomes ‘Amazon for drugs’, landing our Bezos wannabe into a world of legal trouble.
The film opens with the warning, “This film is a product of journalist research, and wild flights of fiction.” It’s a bold claim that, if backed up by a tight and engaging story, would have earned these brave opening lines. Unfortunately, I called it a ‘warning’ for a reason: this film is bafflingly uninspired. The story of Ulbricht’s rise and fall couldn’t be more perfect for a big screen adaptation, a notion he addressed himself during the website’s reign. But thanks to consistently poor dialogue and weird narrative choices, Silk Road does not deliver on this potential.
The film is littered with clichés that, upon some light research, I’ve realised don’t even reflect the true story. One of the lead characters, Rick Bowden (Jason Clarke), is a completely fictional character – apparently an intentional amalgamation of several key players in the investigation. But this doesn’t feel at all necessary: in fact, it feels detrimental to the compelling premise. Bowden never rises above being a painfully stereotypical ‘dirty cop’ type that ticks off all the boxes of moral greyness until you’re comatose from proceedings. If this is commentary on any corruption that occurred during the actual case, it’s nonetheless poorly handled. What’s more, the film is marred by many odd filmmaking techniques. One incredibly absurd transitionary edit, where the scene freezes randomly for several seconds then fades to the next scene, is repeated consistently throughout – to jarring effect. I struggled to grasp the merits of these decisions, and quickly found myself dwelling on them rather than lamenting the seventeenth contrived utterance of the phrase “I want to change the world”.
The performances here are all fine. Nick Robinson is solid as the lead, although it’s difficult to divorce his performance from the seriously woeful screenplay. Clarke, too, does his best with what he’s given, but his character is so inherently and laughably unlikeable that I couldn’t believe half of the screen time is given to him. Attempts to justify his actions feel ham-fisted – a lot of his horrific behaviour is rationalised by his determination to secure private school tuition for his young daughter – which is a classic example of trying to find an anti-hero where there isn’t one. I can’t really comment on Alexandra Shipp’s performance as Ulbricht’s girlfriend, Julia, because the script renders her nothing more than a vessel for characters to condescendingly explain things to – an extraordinary waste of her talents.
Silk Road is an abysmal waste of potential. It’s proof that a story made for the big screen treatment isn’t impervious to the butchering of poor screenplay and direction. The dialogue is juvenile, and every narrative decision it takes in telling Ulbricht’s story is fundamentally disagreeable. And for a film that features the line “You are a walking cliché”, it’s nowhere near as self-aware as it seems to think it is. This is The Wolf of Wall Street meets Riverdale.
Silk Road is on digital platforms 22 March from Vertigo Releasing.
