The trailer for Crypto (the movie) hit YouTube yesterday, featuring all the essential elements of a standard Hollywood thriller — which would be fine if they hadn’t called the movie “Crypto.” Movies rely on the suspension of disbelief, but Wall Street and the Russian Mafia? Really?
Turn On
As reported by Bitcoinist last June, the film features Kurt Russell, an ex-Gilmore Girl, the least famous Hemsworth brother, and someone called Beau (not Bridges). Beau is that rarest of things, an honest man on Wall Street — which annoys his employer, so they reassign him to the arse-end of nowhere, which coincidentally is the town he grew up in.
In his role as an “AML officer… Anti Money Laundering,” he discovers that his company is in bed with the Russian Mafia. Quite why they’ve sent this particular goody-goody to the exact place where they’re covering up such a scam is anyone’s guess.
Even more confusing is why details of bribes reside in a folder named ‘Kickbacks’ but — meh. Hollywood.
Cash In
As everyone knows, most Wall Street hotshots are well into their crypto; most crypto is used for money-laundering; crypto just wouldn’t be crypto without the Russian Mafia.
Just look at all the hot references in this screenshot:
But it all feels a little bit tacked-on — shoed-in if you will — like a blatant jump onto an unnecessary bandwagon. Indeed, a bit of digging reveals the script was based on an original story called ‘The Examiner’ by Jeff Ingber. Ingber has three decades of experience in the financial industry, but he doesn’t profess to know anything about cryptocurrencies.
After an idealistic examiner returns to his boyhood town to inspect its venerable bank, he falls for a woman from his past, confronts painful memories, and uncovers a web of illegal activity and money laundering while unable to trust anyone, including his scheming boss.
So it seems like someone took his original money-laundering story and ‘sexed it up’ by adding some crypto — again, this would be fine if they hadn’t called the whole damn movie ‘Crypto’.
Cop Out
It’s hard to know who this movie is supposed to appeal to. Crypto fans are unlikely to be satisfied with Bitcoin’s first starring role on the big screen. From the trailer, it hardly seems like a good source of crypto-knowledge for the uninitiated. It will be interesting to see how well this movie does on release, which is at selected theatres and streaming platforms from April 12.
Perhaps it will surprise us by being really good and will do its bit to bring cryptocurrency to the masses. They do say that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. It just feels like this is a bit of a cash in on 2017’s Bitcoin-mania. (Sadly, that’s about the speed that Hollywood works.) It would be nicer if something produced by a crypto-enthusiast got this sort of budget and attention.
What do you think of “Crypto?” Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Images courtesy of YouTube.