The Fifth Estate (2013)

Too much of everything

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

WOW! Berg guy is totally self righteous a hole. You don't even have to know anything about the subject matter and you know this movie is totally BOGUS! A complete smear campaign on the founder of Wikileaks. "People love the true WikiLeaks story: a small group of dedicated journalists and tech activists who take on corruption and state criminality against the odds," Assange writes in his statement. "But this film isn't about that. ... Instead of the exciting true story, we get a film about a bland German IT worker who wasn't even there and a fabricated fight over redactions with the old newspapers and the State Department saving the day. The result is a geriatric snoozefest that only the US government could love." "As justification it will claim to be fiction, but it is not fiction. It is distorted truth about living people doing battle with titanic opponents. It is a work of political opportunism, influence, revenge and, above all, cowardice."

-The Fifth Estate is a 2013 thriller film directed by Bill Condon, about the news-leaking website WikiLeaks. The film stars Benedict Cumberbatch as its editor-in-chief and founder Julian Assange, and Daniel Brühl as its former spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg Anthony Mackie, David Thewlis, Alicia Vikander, Stanley Tucci, and Laura Linney are featured in supporting roles. The film's screenplay was written by Josh Singer based in-part on Domscheit-Berg's book Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange and the World's Most Dangerous Website (2011), as well as WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy (2011) by British journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding. The film's name is a term used to describe the people who operate in the manner of journalists outside the normal constraints imposed on the mainstream media. -Co-produced by DreamWorks Pictures and Participant Media, The Fifth Estate premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival,and was released in theaters by Touchstone Pictures in the United States on October 18, 2013, with international distribution divided among Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Reliance Entertainment, and independent arrangements by Mister Smith Entertainment.The film performed poorly at the box office and garnered mixed critical reaction, receiving criticism for its screenplay and direction; however, praise was given on the acting, particularly Cumberbatch's performance.Julian Assange has described the film as a "massive propaganda attack", he did discuss the film with Benedict Cumberbatch, with Cumberbatch claiming that he's "personally supportive" of the organization.Critical response:-The Fifth Estate received mixed reviews from film critics. The film currently holds a 37% approval rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 163 reviews with an average rating of 5.4/10. The site's consensus reads: "Heavy on detail and melodrama but missing the spark from its remarkable real-life inspiration, The Fifth Estate mostly serves as a middling showcase for Benedict Cumberbatch's remarkable talent." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 based on reviews from critics, the film has a score of 49 based on 42 reviews, indicating "mixed to average" reception. It received an average grade of "B" from market-research firm CinemaScore. Despite the film's mixed reception, Benedict Cumberbatch's performance as Assange has received much praise.

I did know a brief bit about wikileaks from reading in the news but not really much behind the beginnings of it and the people behind it. From this perspective I did find many parts of the movie interesting. I also did enjoy some of the acting performances. I thought Daniel Bruhl was great - and is an actor I enjoy watching. Benedict Cumberbatch's portrayal of Julian Assange is as a boring, selfish and egotistic man. I'm not sure what it was but just felt that the movie lacked something. Maybe it's that the story on the face of it seemed quite exciting. The conspiratorial nature of leaking and exposing secret documents is an exciting concept. However underneath the initially exciting concept there seemed to be a lack of real depth or substance. Maybe this is because there is no real story to unearth. Or maybe this portrayal is another way for the powers that be to discredit Assange? Who knows? Definitely watchable. Some good acting. Some interesting insights. No excitement. No substance.

I'll just leave to Wikileaks's response the task of identifying all the gross factual mistakes done by the movie (just search for 'wikileaks internal memo fifth estate').This film is a joke, the objective of tarnishing Assange's image is obvious from beginning to end. It keeps portraying him as a paranoid, egoist, narcissist, sexual maniac, manipulative person, that has no principles whatsoever. Sometimes it even shows him as having some ideals, as a lapse, and then he comes back to his psychopath persona. Really, with so many factual blunders, there's nothing to comment except that it's a poorly written fairy tale.If you have any interest in this topic, I'd rather spend my time and money on the 'Mediastan' documentary.