‘The Fifth Estate’ Review

In an age where everyone wants to know everything, it’s no shock that some people took that to an extreme.  Julian Assanage, to some, may be one of those people with his creation of Wikileaks, a website dedicated to revealing the truths of businesses, governments, banks, and more, that he felt the public deserved to know. The creation of the website, as well as Assanage’s ways of handling the information, has been an extremely controversial topic, so of course a movie based around the events of its creation will be as well.  But we have to look away from the controversy of the site itself to look at the film, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock, Star Trek Into Darkness) as Assanage, and Daniel Bruhl (Inglorious Basterds, The Bourne Ultimatum) as Daniel Domscheit-Berg, the man Assanage brings in to help with the creation of the site. The film is based around Domscheit-Berg’s novel, Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange and the World’s Most Dangerous Website, as well as Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assanage’s War on Secrecy by David Leigh and Luke Harding, and is directed by Bill Condon.

Many are already trying to compare the film to David Fincher’s 2011 film, The Social Network, which followed Mark Zuckerberg’s story on the creation of Facebook. But where that film wisely decided to focus on Zuckerberg’s relationships with the other creators of Facebook, The Fifth Estate can’t seem to find a focus. It’s not really about Assanage, Daniel, or Wikileaks itself. It wants to be all of these things at once, which hurts the films structure and what it wants to accomplish. Because of this, we never really get a real understanding what side of the this story the film wants to take, as it continually bounces around between Assange and Daniel’s very difficult working partnership, Daniel’s personal life, while the growing concern of Wikileaks to the world seems to take a backseat. The film tries to stuff far too much into a short span of time, taking three years worth of story and shoving it into just over two hours, which shows the film may have been better suited for a TV miniseries than one film.

While the story may be a bit messy, the film really stands strong because of its excellent performances by Cumberbatch and Bruhl, who really are the anchors of the film. Assanage has publicly ridiculed the film and its depiction of him, but honestly, I wonder how far off it is. Cumberbatch is incredibly good as Julian, and he brings a very layered performance to the character. We see him playing a very smart, determined man is scarred by his past, and will stop at nothing to make sure he gets what he wants. Even if it means putting the lives of people in danger, for better or for worse. He’s a very flawed individual, but Cumberbatch plays it so well, he’s great to watch, commanding our attention in every scene he’s in. Bruhl fares just as well as Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a man who is brought into Julian’s rather twisted world, and at first sees it as a good thing, but quickly realizes that it may not be. His performance is very good, and he gets to show a more human side to his character, where we get to see his relationship with his girlfriend, albeit being too brief. The toll it takes on him is huge, and you can see it really tears him up inside as Julian’s plans really begin to destroy people’s lives. The climax of the movie especially, where Daniel is forced to take matters into his own hands and try and stop Julian, comes off as the most heartbreaking part of the film for Daniel, and Bruhl really digs into the pain and sacrifice it must have caused Daniel to feel in that moment.

The film is also surrounded with great character actors such as Stanley Tucci, Peter Capaldi, Anthony Mackie, David Thewlis, and Laura Linney, but their characters really aren’t given enough to work with to make them memorable. Tucci in particular, who is almost always a standout in the films he makes, is forgettable and underutilized here. It’s very disappointing seeing so many great actors not used to great effect. Thewlis, Capaldi, and Linney all fare the best here, each getting enough screen time to make them at least memorable in some sense. Thewlis in particular as Nick Davies, a man who works at The Guardian, and wants to help Wikileaks with the way they release their information. He’s a delight in the film, and the screen time he shares with Cumberbatch and Bruhl is great.

One thing the film does posses, other than excellent acting, is incredible editing. This is a very well put together movie, that features some great uses of technological. From the opening moments, where we see a montage going back as far as cave paintings to the present use of computers to share information, to showing the idea of what Wikileaks, and the world wide web itself might look like, is very interesting. It has a very cool stylistic touch, using lots of text in new and interesting ways, which really makes the film cool to watch. Honestly, it’s so well done, it could easily get a nomination for editing at the Academy Awards this years. The film’s pacing is mostly good, but it does start to drag in the middle, as the story really bounces around its focus too much. This is really the film’s biggest downfall, and is really what hurts it in the end. As mentioned before, that lack of focus really makes the story seem far too jumbled, which may turn some viewers off. But for others, the lack of focus, and therefore not making a stand on whether Wikileaks is good or bad, may make some more at ease with the film. By not taking a side, it stands as a neutral party, just trying to tell the story of the site’s creation, and the people behind it.

While we may never know the full story behind the creation of wikileaks, The Fifth Estate does a more than satisfactory job on giving us an idea of how it happened. The film meanders in the middle, not quite sure where it wants to go or what it wants to stay, but it doesn’t change the fact that the film has an excellent first and third act. It really does bring up interesting ideas, especially with the idea that in a world where we want to know everything, when do we go to far in revealing information? The film is far from perfect, but it’s a very enjoyable film, bolstered by its excellent cast, particularly from it’s leads, Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Bruhl. Recommended.

B-

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