The Fifth Estate

I would say that The Fifth Estate is worth seeing, just for the performance by Benedict Cumberbatch alone.  He plays Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, as a tall, emotionally-distant man who frequently talks about how information should be free and unclassified, while at the same time, keeping his own past and life secret from those around him.  If the movie is somewhat flawed, thanks to a few too many subplots and a certain lack of focus, it is his performance that keeps us riveted the whole way through.  The movie itself has more than a few great moments, and does just enough right to make it worth a look.

The movie is kind of like The Social Network crossed with a 1970s conspiracy thriller.  It tracks the early days of the WikiLeaks website, when it was literally just Assange working under a number of aliases and fake e-mail addresses, to make his operation look bigger and more important than it really was.  The real focus of the story, however, is Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Bruhl from the recent Rush) who is lured into Assange's operation by talks of them being able to make history and disclose corruption in corporations and governments by publishing classified documents and videos for all the world to see.  Their first big success working together is when they manage to topple a powerful Swiss bank by revealing reports of corruption from within.  Other stories the two are able to break open as their operation grows bigger includes the murder of two journalists in Iraq, and death squads in Kenya.

Over time, Daniel begins to notice something disturbing about Julian.  He's all about getting the story and revealing the truth, but he doesn't seem to care about anyone or anything else.  If the information they are to reveal is set to place certain people in danger, Assange acts as if it matters little in the face of exposing the truth to the public.  It's about this point that the movie starts to resemble a paranoid thriller, and loses its way a little, with a subplot concerning Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci as two US government agents trying to deal with the blowback when WikiLeaks releases some sensitive documents, revealing the names of operatives.  While Linney and Tucci are good in their scenes, they feel like they belong in a different movie, and take us away from what is really working - the fragile relationship and ultimate fallout between Julian and Daniel, and how Daniel eventually decides he must strike out on his own, and attempts to shut down the site.

The Fifth Estate is at its best when it is dealing with the topic of how powerful the Internet can be, and how freedom of information can both be a blessing and a curse.  At the beginning, Julian is seen almost as a Robin Hood figure, taking down greedy individuals who have been robbing the public blind.  But his desire for information soon seems to cloud over what better judgement he has.  The film is also at its best during these moments, because director Bill Condon films his scenes between Assange and Daniel in a tight, almost claustrophobic style that creates some magnificent tension, especially in their later scenes.  We get to see Daniel's respect for the man he works with slowly unravel over time, and we get to see Assange change from "a man of the people" to a man who only cares about breaking a story.  It's effective, and would have been more so if the movie had as much heart as it had brains.

This is the core problem with the screenplay, credited to Josh Singer.  It's obviously been researched very well, there's no doubt about that.  While I don't know how much of the film has been dramatically fabricated, it feels authentic, and throws a lot of facts and details at us.  What it needed a little bit more of to truly break through was a little bit more of a human touch to these two main characters.  What we learn about them is definitely interesting and holds our attention, but at the same time, we feel like we should be learning more.  The movie sometimes seems more interested in throwing facts and information our way, rather than fleshing out its characters.  It never completely kills the film, as I did ultimately enjoy it, and am recommending it.  But it does make me wish it went through just one more rewrite to add another emotional level to the story.

I think with that approach, and maybe a bit more focus on the main plot, rather than cutting away to various subplots, The Fifth Estate could have stood as one of the better films of the year.  As it is, it is a smart and engrossing, but imperfect film.  I do hope that Cumberbatch's portrayal of Julian is remembered around award time, however.  It's one element that actually reaches the levels of greatness that the movie itself obviously aspired to, but fell short of.

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