Review of The Fifth Estate (2013) by Prosthetics — 17 Oct 2013

Had potential to be huge, but falls short. Still worth viewing though.

The start of the film is fast paced and very difficult to focus. There are metaphors/symbolism used quite a bit through the start of the movie (and through the end) that are not fully understood until about 1/3 or 1/2 through the movie (an office filled with Assanges, which represents how, when Wikileaks was making a name for itself, people thought it had hundreds of people working on it, but all of them were Assange himself with different aliases), which left me with a half-baked understanding of the point what was trying to be made. Once the film did finally start getting rolling, again about 1/3 or 1/2 through, it was great, but harkening back to that first part of the movie, it could be been done much better.

The movie also had great potential to send a message throughout, but the filmmakers chose to remain neutral as a whole, leaving the only person preaching the points to be Assange himself in the movie. So many messages could have been pushed through, but I suppose the need to remain neutral for mass appeal outweighed that. Only at the very end of the movie does a clear message come forth, when the Assange character is addressing you, the viewer, directly.

So my main qualms with the movie are that it was a train wreck to get the plot set up, and no clear message came with the movie.