Deep Web (2015)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

If you want a story of digital crime and punishment in the 2010s, and some background to help demystify these headlines, Deep Web is the right documentary for you.The director is Alex Winter. That's right, the actor who played Bill in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Oh, and Keanu Reeves narrates. Seriously. That might make this enterprise sound silly, but Winter and the producers did an exceptional job of rounding up not only passionate dissidents but law enforcement officials involved in the case, ultimately presenting a spread of perspectives.

Not heading to the Wizard of Oz, although I guess you will see a lot of colorful things if you go down that road. Actually it's a site where people sold drugs. But it was more than that. Sticking it to the man, making the public aware of how vulnerable we all are and how our privacy is being squashed everyday.Unfortunately it is actually more concerned of uncovering the Silk Road thing and the trial that commenced out of it, than diving into the deep (web). So the title may feel a bit misleading, nevertheless an intriguing movie to watch. So if you are not too obsessed about learning what the Deep Web is (it might be too technical anyway), this movie delivers as a documentary. Some questions raised are really important! Let's see where we go from here ...

I was interested in watching a documentary explain the constructs and concepts of the Dark Web. However what I was presented with was the case breakdown against Dread Pirate Roberts(DPR) and the Silk Road Drug Trade. This would have been okay if they had spent about 15 minutes on this, instead the documentary trawls through parents, friends of DPR and the case construct, interviews with law enforcement and senators blah blah blah...I was bored after 20 mins and just fast forwarded to the relevant bit of which there was not many.This documentary is really about DPR and Silk Road. Not about the Dark Web, Tor or Hacking.

I really liked Alex Winter's Downloaded, as I thought it gave a very good synopsis of the Napster story. When I saw that he was doing one about the deep web, I was pretty stoked, especially sine this is a subject that is in it's early stages, unlike Napster. I heard Winter on Adam Carolla's podcast talking about it, and he spent most of the time talking about the Ulbrecht trial, which I was unfamiliar with. Still, since Ulbrecht was a major figure in the deep web, I thought it was going to be a substantial part of the documentary. I was mistaken. Ulbricht's story comprises 90% of this documentary, with various opinions on the war on drugs comprising another 8%. The remaining 2% actually talks about the deep web, and that merely serves to provide a framework and reference point for Ulbrecht's story. I hope that someday there will be a documentary about the deep web that isn't about one particular story or person, unfortunately this isn't it. That said, this is still really interesting, especially to people who have never heard of Ulbrecht's case or the deep web in general.