Review of The Fifth Estate (2013) by Darwin P — 18 Oct 2013

When Bill Condon's The Fifth Estate opens with a montage of communication methods used throughout history you kind of already know that you're about to watch a movie that will give you everything spoonful by spoonful. To be fair, there probably is a segment of the audience out there that needs a little hand holding when it comes to the uses of technology in modern society, but as the film plays out and every little thing is explained (and then explained again) all of the kinetic energy needed to keep it moving and interesting goes away. And this is a shame because the story of Julian Assange and what he did with WikiLeaks demands to be told in an interesting way.

Set in the two years leading up to WikiLeaks' infamous posting of hundreds of thousands of United States diplomatic cables and military logs, The Fifth Estate introduces us to the world of Assange (the great Benedict Cumberbatch) through his onetime collaborator Daniel Berg played by Daniel Brühl (the babyfaced sniper in Inglorious Basterds). We meet Daniel as a sort of bored computer programer who gets caught up in the early days of WikiLeaks by helping Assange verify the validity of documents about a corrupt Swiss bank. The successful posting of these documents leads to a tighter collaboration between the two hackers and sends them on a course to make WikiLeaks a household name while thumbing their nose at traditional journalism.

But like any other wildly successful team, their relationship starts to sour as they cope with fame and scrutiny from both admiring fans and suspicious governments. In many ways it is the classic story of a musical act rising to fame and then getting torn apart by their own success. We've seen it in countless movies before but the main difference here is that their successes have the possibility to topple governments. As the leaks that they procure become more and more important, Daniel and Julian stop seeing eye-to-eye on the moral question of redacting the documents to remove names and context clues that could put innocent people in danger and this of course leads to a massive decision by one of the parties that will impact their working relationship and friendship forever after.

Cumberbatch plays the role of Assange with a perfect air of cockiness and self-entitlement. Here we have a man who starts out with very noble intentions but let's his own ego get in the way to a point where he is merely posting things to prove that he can rather than determining if he even should. It's a fascinating dynamic but unfortunately the film opts to spend more time with Daniel who is really only able to give us frustrated glimpses of Julian's life and personality rather than the whole picture which is really one of the film's greater failings.

Advertisements for the film make big promises with the tagline "You can't expose the world's secrets without exposing your own." And while that may be true it doesn't really add up to much in the film itself. Sure, we get tastes and hints about Assange's odd childhood and why he dyes his hair blonde, but none of it is particularly earth shattering and has little impact on anything else that is going on in the movie. So if that aspect is what's tempting you to see it, I'd hold back.

Oddly enough the most fascinating bits about Assange come just as the final credits are about to roll when we see clips of him (the Cumberbatch version of him that is) doing a sort of on-camera interview talking about what people think of him and the making of this film in particular! I thought it was a fairly crafty and unexpected bit of commentary that could have been interesting throughout the whole film rather than as just a tiny bit tacked onto the end.

Aside from that, Bill Condon's direction is mostly hampered by a screenplay that is bogged down with exposition (see any scene with Laura Linney, Anthony Mackie, and Stanley Tucci) and a focus on the less interesting aspects of everything that WikiLeaks did in a short period of time. One thing that I really liked though was the sort of virtual world Condon created to depict the online workspace that Julian and Daniel occupy. It's a never-ending bank of cubicles under garish fluorescent lights with a sandy floor where the WikiLeaks team does their work and ultimately destroy each other, but its the film's signature visual achievement thanks to some otherwise very drab and unattractive cinematography.

Overall, its hard to recommend The Fifth Estate for anyone other than those who know absolutely nothing about the subject matter. I definitely learned a few new things but it doesn't really deliver any consequential information beyond what you probably saw on the news. Is it a bad film? Not at all. But it's just plain bland and let's face it, sometimes that's worse.

Grade: B.