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‘Silk Road’ Review: A Digital Drug Kingpin’s Undoing

Tiller Russell’s new fact-based thriller about Ross W. Ulbricht could have been a nail-biter, but ended up a limp snooze.

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By Glenn Kenny

This maladroit fact-based cyberthriller begins at a branch of the San Francisco Public Library in 2013. As Ross W. Ulbricht — the founder of an online marketplace called Silk Road , where illegal drugs were bought and sold — the actor Nick Robinson lays out, in voiceover, some bold anti-authoritarian sentiment. He mentions “the insurmountable barrier between the world as it is and the world as I want it,” and how his project was about “taking back our liberty.”

The movie than flashes back several years. At an Austin, Texas, bar, Ross flexes his pickup chops on Julia (Alexandra Shipp). “You wanna dance?” he asks. “No one else is,” she observes. “Exactly,” he replies. Heavy, man.

In many respects, “Silk Road” is an excellent examination of why you should probably never date, or maybe even socialize with, a libertarian. It comes up short in almost every other way, though. In the hands of David Fincher, Michael Mann, Olivier Assayas or Katheryn Bigelow, “Silk Road,” the story of Ulbricht’s outlaw project and how it came to ruin, could deliver thrills and food for thought. Under the aegis of the writer-director Tiller Russell, it delivers limpness.

Here, two D.E.A. agents who themselves committed crimes in pursuing the actual Silk Road case are morphed into one composite character, played by Jason Clarke, the one-time star of Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty” who looks appropriately befuddled by his current circumstance. Tiller also tries to do Fincher’s “The Social Network” one better, showing Julia’s ultimate rejection of Ross as a trigger for him to conspire to commit murder. Nice overreaction, kid. Compounding other story and directorial missteps are dialogue exchanges such as this: “What if you could create an Amazon for drugs?” “You despise Amazon.” “I love freedom.”

Silk Road Rated R for despising Amazon but loving freedom, and other bold moves. Running time: 1 hours 52 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play , FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.

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Silk Road review: The true story of the dark web's illegal drug market

The wild scheme of Ross Ulbricht, a young physics grad who set up a massive online illegal drugs market, keeps us hooked to the bitter end in Silk Road , a fictionalised version of his story

By Linda Marric

17 March 2021

Nick Robinson as Ross Ulbricht, founder of the dark web marketplace Silk Road

Vertigo Releasing

Tiller Russell

Vertigo Releasing ,

streaming from 22 March

IN OCTOBER 2013, Ross Ulbricht was arrested by the FBI and charged with money laundering, conspiracy to commit computer hacking and conspiracy to traffic narcotics. Two years earlier, Ulbricht had launched the Silk Road , the first modern dark web market, known for selling drugs that are illegal in the US.

Suddenly, users could order any illicit substance they wanted from dealers online and have it delivered, no questions asked, to their homes by the US Postal Service the very next day.

Ulbricht’s site operated as a Tor hidden service, making it easier for its users to browse it anonymously and conduct all their transactions using untraceable cryptocurrencies. Within a few months, Ross had amassed a huge following under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts (a reference to The Princess Bride movie) and a small fortune in bitcoin thanks to an article about the site, which appeared in the now defunct Gawker blog.

But what was the route that took a twentysomething, middle-class physics graduate from Texas to the FBI’s most-wanted list?

In Silk Road , the movie version of the story, writer-director Tiller Russell (whose catalogue includes Night Stalker: The hunt for a serial killer , a four-part exploration of the crimes of Richard Ramirez) maps out Ulbricht’s trajectory from law-abiding citizen to drug player in this flawed crime story. It is based on “Dead End On Silk Road: Internet crime kingpin Ross Ulbricht’s big fall” , a Rolling Stone article written about Ulbricht by David Kushner.

The film opens at a branch of the San Francisco Public Library in 2013, where Ulbricht (Nick Robinson) is being trailed by undercover federal agents hoping to catch him red-handed logging onto his site. Then it flashes back to a couple of years before that, to a Texas bar where gaudy libertarian show-off Ulbricht is attempting to smooth-talk his way out of an awkward political exchange with Julia (Alexandra Shipp).

Soon the two become inseparable, and when he jokingly suggests launching a website from which dealers can easily sell drugs, both Julia and Ulbricht’s best friend Max (Daniel David Stewart) are happy to go along with his wild scheme.

Although we are cheekily warned from the start that “this story is true. Except for what we made up or changed”, there are clearly some aspects of the tale that are simply there to pad out an otherwise stale and meandering screenplay. For example, a subplot featuring a brilliant turn from Jason Clarke ( Zero Dark Thirty ) as crooked cybercrime agent Rick Bowden often feels superfluous.

Robinson gives a suitably nervy and understated performance as the anti-hero you wish you could root for. It is this moral ambiguity that gives the film the edge it needed, but it is a shame that more isn’t made of this by Russell. Elsewhere, Paul Walter Hauser ( I, Tonya and Richard Jewell ) gives another scene-stealing turn as hapless Utah hacker Curtis Clark Green, Ulbricht’s employee.

Overall, Silk Road often seems unsure where its sympathies lie, and this is its main problem. Having said that, there is just enough here to keep those who are unfamiliar with the story hooked till the bitter end. Just don’t go expecting anything as good or full of cracking dialogue as David Fincher’s The Social Network or you will be sorely disappointed.

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Silk Road Reviews

Suffice it to say, it may not shock or fascinate like a documentary would've been able to, yet it manages to remain grounded, believable and engaging for the entire two hour run-time.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 6, 2023

The film wants us to see a complicated world filled with bad actors with some good tendencies but none of these characters are interesting enough to justify whatever thematic commentary is provided.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Jun 8, 2022

...nothing but a bad trip.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 23, 2021

A somewhat more cerebral thriller.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 2, 2021

Writer-director Tiller Russell resists moralising for the most part, breezing through a range of political issues, ethical dilemmas and interpersonal dramas. So even if it's fairly bog-standard stuff, it's entertaining.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 1, 2021

A passable cybercrime thriller...kind of manages to be interesting, though the invented stuff feels VERY invented...

Full Review | Mar 30, 2021

Silk Road has solid performances from most of the cast members, but also too many eye-rolling moments of melodrama that were obviously fabricated for the movie. The movie gets a lot of elements wrong in how the DEA investigated this case.

Silk Road presents too many ingredients without enough finesse. But, even if they're not mixed together well enough ... [it] gives enough to perhaps sample its wares.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 24, 2021

But Russell's stilted dialogue and overly preachy tone has a habit of slamming on the brakes, resulting in a film that suffers from numerous frustrating interruptions.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 24, 2021

For a film that's based on a gripping real life crime, Silk Road should be a far more engaging and shocking affair.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 22, 2021

Robinson gives a suitably nervy and understated performance as the anti-hero you wish you could root for.

Full Review | Mar 18, 2021

The Ulbricht story is a dynamite premise scrambled to bits by "Silk Road" with too much wasted talent.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 17, 2021

The game of cat-and-mouse is diverting enough...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 17, 2021

Sadly, while the film gives us the broad strokes of Ulrich's story, it lacks the granular detail that could have turned this into a Miami Vice-style spin on The Social Network.

Perhaps millennials have taken the excitement out of organised crime. You won't find much in this movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 16, 2021

Cybercrime is hard to make sexy but Silk Road manages to fashion a largely gripping story, even if it fails to deliver a weighty or insightful look at the crook at its heart.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 15, 2021

Above average movie about the Dark Web. Jason Clarke excels in his performance as usual.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Mar 7, 2021

Drama about dark-web marketplace has drugs, language.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 4, 2021

Got the right story but the wrong filmmaker to do it.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Mar 4, 2021

Dismiss Silk Road as "The Social Network for stoners" at your own peril. My eyes were plenty red by the end of this movie, but it had nothing to do with drugs.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 3, 2021

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COMMENTS

‘Silk Road’ Review: A Digital Drug Kingpin’s Undoing
The movie than flashes back several years. At an Austin, Texas, bar, Ross flexes his pickup chops on Julia (Alexandra Shipp). “You wanna dance?” he asks. “No one else is,” she observes ...
Silk Road review: The true story of the dark web's illegal
In Silk Road, the movie version of the story, writer-director Tiller Russell (whose catalogue includes Night Stalker: The hunt for a serial killer, a four-part exploration of the crimes of Richard ...
Silk Road
Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 16, 2021. Cybercrime is hard to make sexy but Silk Road manages to fashion a largely gripping story, even if it fails to deliver a weighty or insightful ...