I will admit I knew nothing about The Tinder Swindler before my wife and I sat down to watch it last weekend and I have to say I am glad. This was a real emotional rollercoaster that made me feel for the victims, feel for the villain, hate the villain, question the victims, love the victims, and ultimately made me really mad at the lack of overall justice this scumbag faced.
How to Stream or Download The Tinder Swindler
You can stream it or you can download the film from Netflix using the Netflix App. Click on the Download button located at the end of this review.
The Movie Review
It was something that I ended up talking about with other people for about a week straight as I could not get it out of my mind. The Tinder Swindler is another smash hit documentary from Netflix about the conman, Simon Leviev who used the Tinder app to con hundreds of thousands of dollars out of women.
The way the documentary is presented makes it fly by, I have heard some people say they feel it runs a tad too long, but I never felt that to be the case. We get to hear the stories of two women, Cecile and Pernilla. Hearing how they actually fell and cared for Simon at first gives the show a kind of love story thing going on during the first part of the show.
It is done very, very well and the way that the show uses WhatsApp, Tinder, and phone swipes is very clever. You can clearly tell that both of these women cared for Simon and thought that he was a good guy. Well, Simon is about as far from being a good guy as you can get.
He acts like he is this big shot in the diamond game who lives this lavish lifestyle. He gives the women in his life a taste of this lavish lifestyle and he funds it from the money he cons out of other women! He comes up with these what sounds like ridiculous reasons to require the women to send him money.
The thing is as a viewer, I felt like I would be able to see this guy as a conman from a mile away. However, as these women were so into him and trusted him, it does make you wonder if someone could con you the way he did them. This is where the show can make you feel very uncomfortable and you really do start to hate this guy and want to see him get his comeuppance so bad!
The scope and scale of this guy’s deception and the way he had zero remorse for these women is kind of bone-chilling. He is a grade-A sociopath who really abused these women to live a fake life. I was legit hanging on every word that was said as the documentary came into its final act.
To say I was shocked and horrified by it is a massive understatement. Look, this is a true-life story so the way it ends is the way it ends, but man I was disgusted with the lack of justice this guy got. To find out that he was in custody for no time at all and he now once again lives a great life makes you question a lot of things.
Netflix really does have some amazing documentaries on there, especially crime ones. I would say that The Tinder Swindler is one of the best that they have been a part of so far. It truly does hook you and take you through every end of the emotional spectrum. This is a documentary that you really do need to take the time to watch!
