Avis Metacritic

A relatively breezy and slick slice of entertainment, with a fast-pace style befitting the material and expertly calibrated performances from the ensemble cast.

There's only so much real-world intrigue a crime committed almost entirely via ones and zeroes can entail, and the script's halfhearted attempts to make it all Mean Something feel more than a little callow in the end.

Writer/director Tiller Russell doesn't directly ask us to take a side in Silk Road, a dramatization of the creation and downfall of the eponymous darknet website. But the implications of which side the filmmaker wants us to lean toward are strong—and feel a bit disingenuous.

Silk Road is not without its pleasures – Clarke especially is fun to watch as he gets increasingly cornered with his shakedown shenanigans – just don’t expect the kush; this is strictly schwag.

Silk Road has the makings of a gripping thriller, but it surprisingly lacks the tension required for it to work.

Still, Silk Road remains watchable because both Robinson and Clarke are interesting screen presences. And there’s some humor, which consistently lands better than the thrills.

At the end of the day this is a hollowly reductive account of what happened with a weird subtextual rich punk against blue collar cop agenda falling woefully flat.

A fervently topical, at times intriguing, but ultimately rather sketchy drama about the online black market.

A film littered with tired tropes.

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.