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... which renders it's use as a "based on real life events" movie well, useless. Only redeeming quality is Cumberbatch's exquisite performance. Main problem I have with it is that the script seems to confuse the personas of Assange and Berg. The real life Berg is a mediocre person with a mediocre skill set and a mediocre personality who desires to mount to more than his capabilities will allow thus becomes disgruntled and disillusioned with Wikileaks and Assange once he realizes that neither the organization nor its founder will yield their ideals to provide him with this opportunity.One quite funny example of this is when the movie attempts to twist his blatant exaggeration of his role and self publicizing in the Wired interview as evidence of Assange's alleged distrust of people around him. As a result, in a fit of jealous rage he destroys/steals valuable leaks that whistle-blowers risked their lives to provide to the organization, tries to build his own *leaks where he would be in charge, blackmails Wikileaks with the fate of these stolen leaks and tries to financially benefit from his "defector" status by publishing third rate books.If any of you reading this review require hand holding to be made aware of the sheer hypocrisy of creating a website for leaks while simultaneously destroying/stealing leaks provided to another, I pity you. There is a story to be told here about a man, his ego and his thirst for celebrity, importance and power who ends up making a giant mess. That man, however isn't Assange.
David Allen
"THE FIFTH ESTATE" (2103) IS WONDERFUL! 10 STARS FOR THIS GENIUS MOVIE! HERE'S WHY......! ------------This movie is good for two reasons....It depicts unusual people working as computer experts using their skills for political and social purposes, and also it shows the strange and exotic world and lifestyle these computer expert revolutionaries live in....mostly a world of night, fog, and "film noir" personality. Both of these are worth learning more about.A 2013 feature length documentary titled WE STEAL SECRETS was made about the same subject area covered by THE FIFTH ESTATE (2013), and that documentary is a good companion video to screen back to back along with THE FIFTH ESTATE. Actual persons part of the story covered are shown and some are interviewed in WE STEAL SECRETS, and parts of the overall complicated story are covered not covered in THE FIFTH ESTATE, but useful in understanding the larger, complex story. Both movies are worth seeing. This movie was made to be watched AT HOME while the viewer sits alone on a comfortable couch, paying attention to the many important details of the movie and enjoying it's brilliant cinematic presentation, including it's good direction and screenplay, along with the actor work so widely praised, deservedly.It is a movie made by genius filmmakers about genius characters (I pass no judgment here on whether the genius depicted is used for good or evil.....the characters portrayed are clearly possessed of genius worth studying...and enjoying!).First, it depicts the strange and exciting night time, film-noir (in color, since it was made in 2013) world of computer hacker criminals who are do-gooder, revolutionary types always praised by poets, always written about by novelists, and ALWAYS subjects of thriller movies made by Hollywood studios which want to make profitable pictures. Our lives in present days (2015) are influenced by computers, the Internet, and the World Wide Web and its many websites, including "news leak/ whistle blower" websites like WikiLeaks.Com and OpenLeaks.Com.Political and criminal revolutionaries of the present and future will do their work using computers, hacking, and the Internet, and most people have no idea what this is all about, no expertise or understanding of what it takes to use computers, hacking, the Internet to impact the world.THE FIFTH ESTATE (2013) shows what that world is like (mostly a night-time world where "the action" takes place indoors while perpetrators face computer screens which cast eerie blue/green upward lights onto the faces of the down looking hero/villain computer users.)Normal people, average people never see this world....but they CAN if they watch this movie. A good two hour education in what the world of computer geeks/ revolutionaries looks like. Worth the price of the video for that alone.In addition, we see a portrait of a driven, genius (for good or ill...I pass no judgment about that here, I repeat) computer expert who is also a politician, excellent communicator, and intellectual to an advanced level.....well read, well experienced at dealing with a broad variety of important people from the top to the bottom of society (all societies).The Julian Assange character portrayed in this movie is the result of 60's/70's era counter-culture hippie types.....a second generation hippie/revolutionary, but with up to date skills and ambitions.Similar, if you will, to the TERMINATOR TWO hero child (aged 12 in the TERMINATOR movie) played by Edward Furlong.This movie cannot be understood (or enjoyed) unless the viewer does his/her homework FIRST. Read the Wikipedia biog profile article about Julian Assange, and the Wikipedia article about WIKILEAKS first (read it away from the computer so you can think about it, go back to it later....print out goes to 62 pages if you enlarge the typeface so it's easy to read. Worth the money spent in paper and computer ink!).The population of the world is now 7 billion people (it was 2 billion plus as recently as World War II years....70 years ago). That is incredible.The world is now (predictably and logically) CROWDED. Nobody has privacy in crowds. Good things have happened due to the population increase and changes to accommodate it, but privacy has gone and will keep going.Privacy of the sort people commonly experienced in the past and expected is simply no longer possible, and people better get used to that.This movie is all about privacy, and the fact it is disappearing (I pass no judgment on whether this is a good or a bad thing).The world is now filled with many more smart, educated people than ever lived on the world before (just as it filled with more rich people than ever before, more doctors, more plumbers, etc. etc.......seven billion people worldwide means more of every category of people).This movie is FOR smart educated people (who must do their homework before seeing the movie, and know how due to their advanced formal education), and ABOUT smart educated people (who run everything in the present day world, and are the only ones who can). The heroes, the villains, the cops, the robbers, the government types, the revolutionary types are ALL smart, educated people.The movie is filled with the faces of intelligent people saying intelligent things (and making references nobody who fails to do advanced research about the subject and people depicted in the movie will or can understand).Do your homework FIRST, before seeing the movie.Bad reviews this movie got were not written by people who did their homework first. Ignore those reviews! This is a 10 star movie for sure.
brchthethird
Benedict Cumberbatch, bless his heart, is a great actor and he does a perfectly serviceable portrayal of Julian Assange, but the movie itself commits the cardinal sin of making what could have been a riveting narrative a dull and plodding slog of a film. THE FIFTH ESTATE is about how WikiLeaks got started and covers some of their biggest leaks up to the release of the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs. Most of the focus is on the relationship between Daniel Berg (Daniel Bruhl) and Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and how they have a falling out. While this might have been a critical part of the WikiLeaks story, the way it played out on screen didn't exactly make for the most compelling drama. There were also some detours into Berg's personal life as well a limited international look at the effect these leaks had in various countries, to include the US. Still, I had hopes that this movie would be this generation's equivalent of something like THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, but it simply isn't. While the performances are all capable, and the ensemble cast that Bill Condon rounded up is fairly impressive, the narrative lacks the proper focus and doesn't adequately portray the gravity of what is being presented. Other issues include pacing and attempts at being current and tech-savvy that just come off as distracting. The material is presented almost in documentary-like fashion, down to the hand-held camera-work, but nothing in the central story is given much context, outside of American embarrassment at having their secret diplomatic cables released. There was also little insight given into Assange's character that could have made him more relatable. Instead, we get a portrait of a rather sad and lame individual. As far as the technical qualities are concerned, there really isn't anything to complain about but there really isn't anything that makes it stand out either. The music, which included lots of electronica, was alright but it wasn't anything I particularly loved. Overall, this was a rather disappointing watch due to the pedestrian approach it took. Your time would be better spent watching WE STEAL SECRETS: THE STORY OF WIKILEAKS, a documentary on the material that is dramatically presented here.
