Film Review: The Fifth Estate

Director: Bill Condron

The political landscape of data security and public knowledge was brought to the very forefront of the debate after the leaks from WikiLeaks over a number of years exposed corporations and governments. Julian Assange is still holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy as we speak after being sought in Sweden and America on legal charges. Benedicte Cumberbatch plays the almost anti-hero Assange here and actually spoke with him about the role as he is a supporter of the work WikiLeaks has done.

Julian Assange (Cumberbatch) with Domschiet-Berg (Bruhl) and two WikiLeaks employees 

Assange labelled the film as "serious propaganda" but this was always likely as it showed him to be incredibly stubborn, hostile and totally inconsiderate to the cause of others. Plus films are always known to embellish facts to suit the ends of the producers. To be fair to Cumberbatch he does a good job of portraying that immensely focussed but socially astranged WikiLeaks founder, whilst Bruhl continues to impress as the more conscientious Domshiet-Berg who naturally comes off the better in the movie since it was based on his book.

Comparisons have been made to the film The Social Network which was always going to be more popular at the box office due to Facebook's huge popularity over a political cause like Wikileaks. But the big difference is the Aaron Sorkin written script for The Social Network is what makes the movie truly brilliant and it is sadly what is lacking from The Fifth Estate, the interactions between the characters fails to get off the ground leaving you feeling inert. The story itself starts off in reasonably emphatic fashion but fails to build off this early momentum before slowly crawling to its finale which is obviously dogged by the fact we know what happens.

1.5/4 Overloaded in detail and lacks punchy script