El quinto poder

I tend not to read reviews until after I've watched a film lest they sway my opinion, but it wasn't hard to miss the nonchalance (that veers towards damnation) with which The Fifth Estate has been received. Nor that it plays just once per day, at 9pm, at my local Cineworld compared to five screenings per day for Captain Phillips, eight for Ender's Game and fourteen for Thor: The Dark World.

But Bill Condon's (Gods and Monsters, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn) film about Wikileaks founder and hero/pariah (delete according to your political stance) Julian Assange really isn't that bad. Take that as you will.

Not really a biopic, The Fifth Estate takes a similar approach to Assange as The Social Network did with Mark Zuckerberg, looking more at the product of the man than the man himself. It consumes 8 minutes more of your time than The Social Network, feels twice as long, is far more arduous and will require just a single viewing, compared to repeat visits for the Facebook flick.

Trudging through the meeting of the ultimate whistleblower Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Daniel Berg (Daniel Brühl), the explosion of Wikileaks in the public's perception, the shadowy deals with The Guardian and the fall out from countless exposés about underhand dealings from governments and corporations, The Fifth Estate spews out a huge amount of information but never quite manages to get down to the gritty truth.

It feels cluttered and more of a lecture than a movie and I'm not sure I know a great deal more about Assange now than I did yesterday. Too much has been shoehorned into its 128 minute running time but it still only glances over some of the highest profile matters surrounding Assange: the Bradley/Chelsea Manning revelations and the sexual misconduct allegation against Assange that have led to his exile in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Cumberbatch succeeds admirably in portraying Assange as an obsessive with a serious case of egotism and a lack of social graces or personal care. It's a fine performance and will be a revelation to those who know Cumberbatch only from BBC's Sherlock or Star Trek Into Darkness. He is eminently watchable and succeeds in making an unpleasant man fascinating to watch. Assange wrote an open letter to Cumberbatch hoping to dissuade him from portraying him on film in The Fifth Estate, a "wretched" film, a work of fiction "based on a deceitful book", and one imagines that, should a copy of the film reach him inside his 'prison' he'll be dismayed by the way he is portrayed. Perhaps he'll be magnanimous to concede that, nevertheless, it is a fine performance from Cumberbatch.

Many of the other prominent actors don't fare quite as well. Brühl follows up his superb performance in Rush with a more downbeat character that he never really sinks his teeth into. Like Brühl, Alicia Vikander, Berg's love interest and just one of many thorns in Assange's side, has little to play with and her performance is smothered by the presence of Assange.

Bucking the trend, David Thewlis gives a pastiche of a Guardian journalist, more given to flouncing noisily into meetings and huffing in exasperation than acting. But Thewlis' performance is evened out by able turns from the new Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi, Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci, though with so many characters vying for screen time and Condon battling to squeeze in as much information as possible alongside some outdated 80s techniques (text across faces, anyone?), they, too are lost in the mêlée.

The Fifth Estate isn't a great film and it may not be terribly truthful (the jury's still out on that one) but, despite it's flaws, I still enjoyed it. Once! And maybe truthful representations aren't important. As Cumberbatch wrote in his response to Assange, "…the film should provoke debate and not consensus."

And in that, at least, The Fifth Estate succeeds admirably.

For more reviews from The Squiss, subscribe to my blog and like the Facebook page.

I know I'm in the minority, but I liked "The Fifth Estate." Others will agree with me, though, that the best thing about it is Benedict Cumberbatch, who does brilliant job as Julian Assange.

I come at this film from a slightly different point of view because I still don't know what was so fabulous about "The Social Network." I understand the comparisons due to the similar stories. People seemed to find "The Social Network" incredibly compelling, but I guess it's a generational thing - I just didn't.

I attended this film with a friend who had only a vague knowledge of Wikileaks, and he absolutely loved it and found the "redaction" scenes toward the end of the film tense and suspenseful, as I did.

I realize that some of the film may be fictional, and that Wikileaks is a controversial subject. I can't pretend to know the truth. Cumberbatch portrays Assange as an egomaniacal, protective, arrogant man who refuses to compromise, even when information may hurt people. His right hand, Daniel (Daniel Bruhl) begins to see that Assange's dictatorial attitude and paranoia has gone too far and is actually in the long run going to hurt what could have been an important organization.

What should we know, and when should we know it? Assange wants to release unedited documents onto the World Wide Web. Yet in the beginning of the film, he wants at all costs to protect sources. He seems to forget that later on. That's all in the film, based on two books that we're told are biased.

Still, The Fifth Estate raises some interesting questions and also talks about the challenges we face now with news going out onto the Internet. I think some transparency is healthy; I don't think banks should help customers cheat the U.S. out of $30 billion in taxes; but I don't believe military strategy should be leaked, and I believe that sources should be protected. It seems like so much of what we hear today, from politicians and celebrities and publicists is "spin." And most of us are aware that there's more than they're telling us.

As far as the acting, Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci are marvelous in small roles; Cumberbatch gets excellent support from Bruhl, Alicia Vikander, Jamie Blackley, and the rest of the cast.

In short, Cumberbatch's performance should be seen and appreciated. I think this film has gotten a bad rap. It's certainly not an awful film.

As I was driving to the theater I was thinking about what my review might sound like based on just what I'd seen in the trailers, it sounded something like this "all journalist get into the business for the right reasons such as making the world a better place but it usually winds up being more about celebrity status after a while, this movie demonstrates the true initial journalistic urge"... well I was completely wrong and the movie did just the opposite of confirming my suspicions.

The movie starts out by convincing you of the genius and passion of Julian Assange where you feel compelled to see him as a champion for justice but about half way through you start to see him as a real A**hole (this is as the movie portrays him, not my personal view), as it proceeds his character gets worse... almost villainous (not that he surrounded by angels; mind you).

I think it worth a look especially if you were not aware of the WikiLeaks phenomena as it was occurring, I for one found much of it informative and I believe it will raise some awareness about censorship in the media and the plight of genius (if not bordering on madness but isn't that always the way?).

'THE FIFTH ESTATE': Two Stars (Out of Five)

Propaganda film attempting to smear the public's view of the internet news site WikiLeaks. It's based on the books 'Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange and the World's Most Dangerous Website' by Daniel Domscheit-Berg and 'WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy' by David Leigh and Luke Harding. It was scripted by Josh Singer and directed by Bill Condon. The movie stars Benedict Cumberbatch as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Daniel Bruhl as his partner in crime Daniel Domscheit-Berg. The two lead actors are both great in the film but the movie itself is shamefully exploitative.

The story explores how Julian Assange (Cumberbatch) and Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Bruhl) first met (in 2007) and started up the website WikiLeaks. The site is dedicated to releasing important news to the public, that's currently being kept secret, while protecting their sources (and keeping them anonymous). Their relationship becomes troubled as the website grows more and more controversial and Daniel suspects that Assange has ulterior motives for 'publishing the truth' (while not really caring about protecting the people providing the information). The movie also examines Assange's upbringing (and time spent in a cult) and Daniel's relationships with colleagues, family and friends.

The film is somewhat suspenseful and adequately directed but it makes no effort whatsoever to hide it's true agenda; that of smearing WikiLeaks and it's founder Julian Assange. Like I said the two lead performances are excellent though, especially Cumberbatch (who is supportive of WikiLeaks and communicated regularly with Assange during filming). Cumberbatch was drawn to the acting opportunities provided by his complex role and encouraged rewrites of the horrid script. He's said "No matter how you cut it, he's (Assagne) done us a massive service, to wake us up to the zombielike way we absorb our news". I don't have any idea what kind of a person Assange is but I agree he's done us all "a massive service" and don't think this film does anyone one. I'm glad it bombed (so horribly) at the Box Office and think most people were smart enough to know what it's true intentions are. The documentary 'WE STEAL SECRETS: THE STORY OF WIKILEAKS' is a much more honest and informative film on the subject. You should check it out instead.

Watch our movie review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrdaYYFcs0U

"The Fifth Estate" is a film made by Dreamworks apparently with the intention of showing Julian Assange as an egocentric villain and seems to manipulate the truth about the role of the Weakleaks. On the contrary, his unfaithful and ambitious partner Daniel Domscheit-Berg a.k.a. Daniel Schmitt is depicted like a rational adviser and the hero, destroying the whistleblower information and data of the Weakleaks to protect the "innocent spies and informers". The film is based on a book written by Daniel Domscheit-Berg; therefore totally partial about the truth without showing the side of Julian Assange. I am not expert in this subject and I have just the common sense of reading and listening to the news about Julian Assange and the Wikileaks. But the film seems to be manipulative and depicting one side of the truth only. Therefore as a documentary, it is worthless; however a thriller, it is engaging and has good performances. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "O Quinto Poder" ("O Quinto Poder")