Now available from Well Go USA
Friends who have invested in cryptocurrency from information they got on Reddit end up losing money and wanting it back. One of them gathers the group and they find someone they believe is responsible and should pay.
Written by John Hibey and Cutter Hodierne, and directed by the latter, Cold Wallet is a thriller that has a lot going on and somehow almost nothing going on. Yeah, yeah, this makes no sense, but it does. The film has plenty going on and some twists and turns in every few scenes, but somehow nothing catches the attention fully and the twists and turns feel like they don’t matter much. Story here feels like it’s about bad people going after more successful bad people. Basically, none of the characters feel like people you’d want to spend time with, they each have issues and personality quirks that just ick you from the start. While this may be planned, more likability in characters goes a long way to keep the viewer interested and involved. The writing here isn’t bad, but the characters and the twists and turns could have used another revision or two. There are some things in this that work, but they get overshadowed by those that do not.
The cast here is decent, nothing particularly great, but also nothing particularly bad either. There is some interest in how they bring their respective parts to the screen and how they attempt to add nuance to these characters. While the leads aren’t fully bad, they aren’t particularly interesting characters so that does influence the cast and their work. Lead Raúl Castillo has possibly the most fleshed out character of the bunch, but the writing limits him a lot here. Nonetheless, he does decent work in his part. Something that can be said of most of the cast with everyone doing their decent-est to bring their characters to life, but nothing much more.
The cinematography here has some solid moments with scenes that look stunning and others that look just menacing enough for the images to have more impact on the viewer than what is happening in them. This work from cinematographer Oliver Millar shows that even a film with limited interest in the story can have solid imagery. Of course, there isn’t a whole new world to explore here, but some of the scenes have just enough pizzazz to make them stand out visually. Of course, the lighting here has a lot to do with it, so kudos to that department as well.
Overall, Cold Wallet is not a bad film, it’s decent even, but the characters are not particularly likable so when things happen to them, the viewer just doesn’t have enough to care about to really be invested. The film does look great and there are a few scenes here and there that really work, but something is truly missing here, something that brings the empathy up and helps keep the viewer invested in what they are watching.