Cold Wallet review – blackly comic revenge fable goes into crypto’s corrupt heart
The opening crawl for this timely, acute thriller proclaims it’s a Steven Soderbergh presentation, although that’s the only place that the veteran film-maker’s name crops up in the credits. No doubt kudos here should mostly be due to director Cutter Hodierne and screenwriter John Hibey, as well as their crew and cast, but it’s tempting to sense a light Soderberghian touch in Cold Wallet’s blackly comic look at how cryptocurrency eats the soul of all who meddle in its black arts.
Charismatic Raúl Castillo stars as protagonist Billy, a bit of a screw-up who is neck deep in a crypto called – tellingly for those aware of the history of bubble stocks – Tulip. Hoping to cash out enough to buy a house so he can gain better access to his daughter who lives with his bitter ex-wife (Zoe Winters from Succession), Billy is the proverbial this close to his goal when the currency suddenly tanks after reports of the sudden death of its founder. Now, Billy finds he actually owes money. The same goes for his good friend, hippy-jock Dom (Tony Cavalero), who Billy talked into investing in Tulip and is now at risk of losing his gym business.
Eva (Melonie Diaz), another Tulip investor Billy met through subreddits, works out that Tulip’s founder, Charles Hegel (Josh Brener, from Silicon Valley), is not dead at all; in fact, he’s conveniently holed up in a mansion not far away. So Eva, Dom and Billy set out to find him, and then strong-arm him into compensating not just themselves but everyone who has lost out in the Tulip bust. Naturally, it’s not as straightforward as all that, and while they duly find Hegel, the gap between the trio’s competence and Hegel’s slippery, manipulative wiliness is significant. There’s a lot of nerd talk about passkeys, cold wallets and whatnot, but the film is to its credit much more interested in psychology rather than tech, and the fine lines between avarice, rage and impotence that make the capitalist world go round.
