This SXSW Heist Thriller Is the ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ of Cryptocurrency

At SXSW 2024, Cold Wallet, presented by Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s Eleven), world premiered to the Austin crowd. This heist thriller from director and co-writer Cutter Hodierne (Fishing Without Nets) staked its space amid larger titles like Immaculate and The Fall Guy with a crypto spin and a beating heart of A+ performances from its cast.

Starring Raúl Castillo (Cassandro), Melonie Diaz (Charmed), Tony Cavalero (The Righteous Gemstones), and Josh Brener (Silicon Valley), Hodierne pitches Cold Wallet as “a crypto-heist thriller that follows a ragtag group of Redditors. They get revenge on a financial influencer who screwed them over in a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme.” In today’s perpetually online world, a heist flick like this seems like a ripe idea waiting to be plucked from the ether.

While promoting the movie at the festival, Hodierne, Brener, and Cavalero stopped by Collider’s interview studio to talk with our own Perri Nemiroff about the early stages of development, what exactly a “cold wallet” is, and loads more.

What Is a Cryptocurrency Heist Thriller?

Cryptocurrency can be a nebulous concept, and the notion of a “cold wallet” isn’t everyday jargon for a lot of people, but Hodierne understands this. While crypto rabbit holes can lead to some fascinating, albeit sinister stories (more on those later), the director has a simple way of looking at it. “A cryptocurrency exchange is a bank,” he explains, “and a cold storage device is a little bit like a mattress. Like holding your money under your mattress.”

So how did he and co-writer John Hibey (Fishing Without Nets) land on a feature-length movie based on this premise? Hodierne says:

“
The film actually originated as an idea around doxxing.
We were developing a film around doxxing, which is where someone’s address gets released on the internet, sometimes for nefarious reasons. A friend of mine named, Justin Staple, said, ‘Why don’t you do it about a crypto-heist thriller?’ So John [Hibey] and I developed a screenplay around that premise.
I was pretty into meme culture around AMC and GameStop and Dogecoin, and just riding that line between the humor that you would see on these message boards, but then also the kind of dark reality of what some people are experiencing
. I love when comedy can mash up with something dark and nefarious. It’s sort of my favorite thing.”

But Are Crypto Heists Realistic?

Perhaps a Reservoir Dogs-esque thriller doesn’t often unfold quite the same way in real life, but Cold Wallet obviously isn’t purely fictional. In researching for their roles, the cast members shared some of the more unbelievable — yet true — stories they stumbled across. Cavalero shared an anecdote from Lenox, Massachusetts, where they filmed on location, and Brener informed us that there’s “a ton” of shocking stories that, with a little Hollywood magic, could drive a trio of Redditors into a calculated revenge scheme.

Brener, who’s better known for his more comedy-leaning roles, shared a few of his inspirations when preparing to play the conniving “financial influencer” for the movie:

“I watched a lot of documentaries to get my mind around all of this stuff.
We were watching

Trust No One [
The Hunt for the Crypto King
] and the Elizabeth Holmes stuff, and honestly, the Fyre Fest documentary.
All these characters who are basically just hucksters. There’s a new one called
Bitconned
on Netflix. It’s totally worth watching. The main character is like an absolute psychopath. He’s like, ‘When I was a kid I knew I just wanted to be a criminal. I always knew I wanted to be a criminal.’”

He goes on to add that:

“The story that stuck with me is that this guy, they’ve basically done sort of what happens in the movie where they make all this money under false pretenses for a product that doesn’t really exist. This guy gets reached out to, gets a DM from one of their investors who’s like, ‘I’m having trouble with my transaction. Can you help me?’ He means to send his transaction ID, but he sends his username and password to this guy who runs this company and is making literally $100 million dollars off of people. The guy’s like, ‘I couldn’t help myself. I just logged into his account and transferred all that shit over to me.’ It’s like,
you’re so soulless that you were already getting all the money, and you were still like, ‘I’m gonna steal just a little bit more.’
”

‘Cold Wallet’ Is ‘Oceans Eleven’ for Cryptocurrency

With a new frontier for the exchange of funds, and people always looking to take advantage, the stage is set for Hodierne’s sophomore feature. The heist thriller is a tried and true genre with successes like Michael Mann’s Heat, Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven, and countless others. Cold Wallet is just that, but with a prize that isn’t so tangible. To this, the director says, “Crypto obviously plays a critical role in it, but the technicalities of crypto aren’t what the story’s relying on.” Instead, without glittering bars of gold or secured vaults of cash, Castillo, Diaz, Brener and Cavalero carry the film by stepping into roles Hodierne says were “slightly someone new” for each of them.

“The story’s relying on these actors’ great instincts and all of the tension that’s created from the heist genre to begin with. I think it just makes the movie a little bit fresh and current to set it in this world that’s a new, bizarre currency …
At its heart, it’s a heist genre movie that’s really fun, and crypto is sort of the MacGuffin, I suppose
… These devices are ultimately just a key to access a bag of money. It really, again, just comes down to, ‘How are we creating all of this tension and excitement around their desires and the characters’ motivations?’ At the end of the day, we never really see it. It’s all digital numbers. So, I guess in that sense,
it’s relying on the heart of the film and the heart of the characters to make that matter, to make this off-screen, unknown digital item have some meaning
.”

Cold Wallet has yet to set an official release date, so check out Perri’s full interview in the video at the top of this article for even more on what Soderbergh called a “smart, spiky, off-center take on the vigilante genre.”