In my review of Craig Gillespie's Dumb Money, which dramatised the GameStop "short squeeze" of January 2021, I remarked how it resembled a Steven Soderbergh movie in both its execution and the use of its ensemble cast. Perhaps Soderbergh felt like he missed out on lending his commentary to our current culture of tech-savvy get-rich-quick endeavours, as he has lent his name (in the form of a "Steven Soderbergh Presents" title card) to director Cutter Hodierne's crypto-themed thriller Cold Wallet.
Hodierne's film takes its title from the storage devices (usually in the form of USB drives) that house crypto-currency units offline, thus making them secure from online threats. Movies about hackers tend to struggle to make cybercrime interesting, desperately finding ways to get the hackers away from their desks. Cold Wallet avoids this by making its protagonist a far from tech-savvy naive dupe who resorts to old school methods to take his revenge when he falls for a crypto-scam. As such, crypto-currency is really just a macguffin for what is a standard home invasion/kidnapping thriller.
Sadsack Billy (Raúl Castillo) thinks he's found the answer to all his financial woes through a crypto -currency known as Tulip. Inveigling his jock/hippy buddy Dom (Tony Cavalero) into the scheme, Billy runs up a considerable sum, enough to buy his daughter a Playstation, much to the chagrin of his ex-wife, who would rather Billy spent the money on the child support payments he's constantly behind on. Following the advice of YouTube and Reddit "experts", Billy refuses to cash out, believing his funds will only keep increasing. But then disaster strikes. Tulip's founder, Charles Hegel (Josh Brener), is reported to have died, forcing the stocks to plummet and leaving Billy and Dom in considerable debt.
Then Billy receives a message from Eva (Melonie Diaz), another Tulip victim who lives nearby. Unlike Billy and Dom, Eva knows how a toaster works, and she has discovered that not only is Hegel alive after faking his death, but he is hiding out in a mansion not too far away. Hatching a plan to force Hegel to hand over his cold wallets and return the money to those he cheated, the trio purchase a pistol from Walmart and head to Hegel's home in search of revenge.
If you've seen movies like Ruthless People or Life of Crime, you'll be familiar with how Cold Wallet plays out. Like the abductees played by Bette Midler and Jennifer Aniston in those movies, Hegel proves more than a match for his abductors, outwitting them at every turn and using his powers of persuasion to spread paranoia among the trio.
Ironically, Hegel does a far better job of creating any tension than the actual filmmakers manage. Hegel puts doubts in the minds of his tormenters regarding their motives and whether they can trust one another, but the film never does anything to put the viewer on edge in the same way. We're given no evidence that any of the three central protagonists are out to screw over the others, so this element falls flat. It's suggested that time will run out for this trio, with Hegel's goons and the Feds expected to arrive at some point, but the movie fails to establish any kind of ticking clock tension. 7am is defined as the time when Hegel's assistant will arrive under the pretence of delivering codes to crack open the cold wallets but presumably to rescue Hegel, but the film never lets us know how close we are to 7am at any point. The middle section suffers from a lot of lag, leaving the audience waiting around with the characters, who simply aren't interesting enough to hold our attention.
Cold Wallet never quite nails its tone, veering from the black comedy of Michael Bay's Pain & Gain with its out-of-depth meatheads to something darker in its final act. The characters similarly can't quite figure out if they're in a comedy or a thriller; they're cartoonishly drawn, especially Cavalero's Dom, who embodies the classic cliché of the dumb gorilla with a soft centre. As the central figure, Castillo's Billy is too reckless to be sympathetic, and his reaction to a late blast of violence feels inauthentic. As Eva, Diaz is given little to do, as her character exists solely to make us question her allegiances without actually showing us why we should doubt her. It's Bremer who comes off best, suitably slimy as our villain-du-jour, the tech-bro, convincing us as someone using his nerdy talents to lash out at the world in revenge for having his head slammed into a locker every day of high school.
Cold Wallet plays on its title by setting its action in America's frozen north, a touch that superficially draws comparisons with Fargo. It offers a scenario that the Coen brothers would likely make hay with, but Hodierne and screenwriter John Hibey fail to do any interesting with the premise. It may be very of the moment with its crypto backdrop, but Cold Wallet is a thriller we've seen multiple times before. Viewers may be tempted to cash out before the end credits roll and invest their time elsewhere.
Directed by: Cutter Hodiene
Starring: Raúl Castillo, Melonie Diaz, Tony Cavalero, Josh Brener
