Review of The Fifth Estate (2013) by Maksim B — 23 Mar 2014

The Fifth Estate is the highly anticipated story of the creation and the turmoil which WikiLeaks has caused since its creation. Pretentious, unevenly paced and over-dramatic, the story of WikiLeaks is surely a compelling one, bolstered by outstanding performances and a topic which attracts the attention of the audience. Yet, the lack of actual thrills and tension is a major disappointment, especially having in mind the source material and its potential.

As it could be expected, The Fifth Estate is now only about WikiLeaks, but about the controversial personality of Julian Assange (played by Benedict Cumberbatch). Going from the very early days of WikiLeaks and the initial collaboration between Assange and his colleague Daniel Domscheit- Berg (Daniel Bruhl), the story slowly delves deeper into the internal conflicts, idealism and believes of the two main guys behind WikiLeaks. Focusing on Assange's personality is a necessary part of the movie in order to be able to explain some of the controversial information which WikiLeaks released throughout the last years.

Unfortunately, director Bill Condon fails to add up the most important ingredient for such kind of movie and for such a source material: tension. There is almost no tension throughout the whole story and given the misleading movie trailer, this could be considered a blow to the whole The Fifth Estate. Both lead actors deliver outstanding performances and Benedict Cumberbatch is shining all over the 128 minutes of the movie. Yet, this is not enough to raise it from the level of being a passable movie to a must see, adrenaline-pumping thriller.

In conclusion, The Fifth Estate could be considered a passable movie, or a disappointment, depending on the initial expectations prior to seeing it. It is a miss that not all the potential is used to make it a gripping thriller, but as a Sunday entertainment it works fine. Even if you are an news/internet invalid and you have no idea what is WikiLeaks.