Review of The Fifth Estate (2013) by Seán G — 01 Feb 2014

Ouf, how to review this one. A difficult film to rate, Bill Condon's look into the the rise of WikiLeaks and its egocentric founder Julian Assange, played by Benedict Cumberbatch has both many virtues as well as obvious and yawn worthy faults that bring the overall experience down.

The film does feature some great talent on screen as the action goes from one European locale to another. Most important, it has another stand out performance from Daniel Bruhl, last seen in Ron Howard's critically acclaimed Rush.

He plays Daniel, a hacker who ends up helping the white haired Assange on the quest for transparent information, free of edits and biases. Stuck in the shadow of Assange's ego, he struggles to balance morals and his passion for the project.

The arc of Daniel is a bit too obvious and serves greatly as a plot device to help guide the audience along the journey. Assange is greatly acted by Cumberbatch but the movie struggles to maintain an interest as Assange is a not a character you want to root for and having him as a lead makes his ambition hard to support.

Add some subplot about US sources (who cares?) and the overall pace and goal of the film begins to get rather muddled. The upside, beside the acting, is the way the investigation scenes, namely the final two, are presented.

Stakes are raised and we feel the impending doom that these stories can reign down on history before they hit the net and the news agencies who have chosen to partner with them. Fifth Estate is by no means a bad film, but it is also not a particularly great one either.