I have to open by saying that if you’re someone like me who was hoping that this movie would bring a positive image to crypto, then you should probably brace yourself for a huge disappointment. And I hope that I had better news than that.
The story opens with a Wall Street savant discovering inconsistencies in the books of the company that employs him, which immediately puts his boss in red alert since they have all kinds of shady deals with the Russian mafia.
To throw him off the scent, she sends him away to a tiny village that just happens to be the main base for all their shady operations… The very operations she’s trying to hide from him.
Which makes zero sense. But it gets better.
As it happens, that tiny middle America town turns out to be the very own hometown of this genius detective. What a coincidence, am I right?
As he makes his way back to town, we quickly go through all the common clichés of your average Hallmark movie, from the locals’ rejection and hostility towards this “hotshot” from the big city, to the simple old brother who only drinks and fights..etc.
To make matters worse, his dad - whom he hasn’t spoken to since he left to NY - is also dealing with a massive crisis, so the return of the prodigal son couldn't be more timely.
As you can appreciate, it’s such a fresh and original plot.
A young protagonist growing up in a backwards small town that cannot hold all their big ambitions, so they move to the Big Apple to pursue all their dreams and aspirations. Only that things don’t work out as they planned and their past ends up catching up to them.
As you keep watching and checking all the cliché boxes, you can’t help but realize that there’s a song stuck in your head.
It’s Leann Rimes’s soundtrack “Can’t Fight the Moonlight”.
Do you remember those old B-movies where the characters were so plain that it always seemed over-the-top?
“Tony is the funny one, Jimmy is the rude one, Samantha is the sexy chick... Etc”
You know, characters so one-dimensional and lacking of any depth to the point they start seeming a little too cartoonish.
Take his father for example, he is portrayed as a stubborn man with a pride that goes way over the top.
He owns a farm that no longer produces food. The soil is rotten, and the farm is no longer viable for food production.
In other words, the farm is done. But pride stops his dad from selling it.
Our protagonist learns that his father is not only in debt, but that the bank is going to seize his farm at the end of the month and he’s going to end up in the street real soon.
He also learns that the mafia is offering 20 millions for that useless land but the dad still refuses to sell.
That’s what happens when you create extremely plain characters, they often tend to turns cartoonish, because nobody is like that in real life.
Let’s face it, do you know anybody who would refuse a bunch of millions for a finished farm? A farm that not only has a dead land, but one that they will lose in a few days anyways?
The big mystery is how they got Kurt Russell to play that part.
Listen to this, so this tiny town with massive potato fields and double-digit inhabitants just happens to be ground zero for all the money operations of the Russian mob.
Armed with their sharp wits and unparalleled ingenuity, the Russians have cooked up the perfect plan. A plan so perfect that it passes totally undetected.
You see, the mafia came up with the clever idea of opening a very chic and avant garde art gallery for the 14 inhabitants in that backwards town.
Yeah, brilliant plan! That’s totally going to fool the IRS.
Needless to say, the writers DID NOT put that script on a press-test. But let’s move on.
In order to hide all those billions generated by their wide array of criminal activities, the mafia converts all that cash into bitcoin and buys art with it.
Which begs the question, why not just convert it to Bitcoin? Why bring in art into the mix? But I’m digressing.
Luckily, our sharp-eyed genius friend is totally onto them.
The problem is he doesn’t know what Bitcoin is. He starts googling it, but he gets too confused.
So he goes to his friend who runs the only 7/11 store in town, asks him to explain Bitcoin to him.
As we all know, Bitcoin is a subject that is too hard to understand for your average Savant genius.
You need a store clerk for that.
Totally logical.
But once again, we’re in luck as his friend happens to have an entire Bitcoin mining operation running from that very convenience store.
From there it was only a matter of time until our Wall Street genius realizes that the mafia are converting all their money into bitcoin and sending all that Bitcoin the same address.
How convenient.
The Russian mob have been evading international intelligence agencies for decades, but they don’t know better than to use only one bitcoin address for all their operations.
But truth be said is that 60 minutes into the movie, I'm just glad that they don't actually write "Kickbacks" in the memo of their transactions.
So the protagonist gives that one bitcoin address to his buddy, and our 7/11 friend traces the Bitcoin address to a little shack in the middle of nowhere.
I know… What the hell?
And now our protagonist is starting to understand why the Russians are so interested in buying his dad’s Potato farm.
They want to build another shack in order to receive more bitcoins as they expand their operations.
Again, what the hell?
I guess that’s why Biggie wrote that song: “ Mo Money, Mo Shacks.”
Jokes aside, it does make you wonder:
How come this is the only location in the world where the Russian mafia are able to receive Bitcoins?
Or maybe they just had another cliché homecoming script on the ready, and they added crypto to it last minute?
More importantly, why would you need to build wooden shacks to receive bitcoins anyways?
But I guess the only question that matters is this one:
Do the writers even understand how bitcoin works? Or did they just aim to demonize cryptocurrency as the money laundering tool for the Russian mob?
The movie ends in the same absurd way it started, the FBI were actually onto the mafia all this time. But they were just waiting for somebody smart enough to uncover their money laundering operation.
It wasn’t until the return of the prodigal son that they could arrest them.
Not because he solved the case, but because he asked his 7/11 friend to trace the bitcoins to the shack.
There are many, many other plot holes that I skipped for the sake of length. But for someone who was hoping that this movie would give some nice exposure to blockchain, I couldn’t be more disappointed.
Hopefully, we’ll see better movies about cryptos and blockchain in the future, it’s just that this wasn’t it.
