The Fifth Estate: Movie Review

The website WikiLeaks has exposed more government secrets and corporate crimes than most media outlets combined.  Most of the world is familiar with WikiLeaks, but many like myself never followed the exploits of organization founder Julian Assange.  The new film “The Fifth Estate” tries to give us a glimpse into who the man was through the eyes of his partner Daniel Berg.  Unfortunately, director Bill Condon manages to brush aside the elements of the story that would be interesting, which is the impact WikiLeaks had on nations in favor of focusing on the relationship between the two men.

Daniel Berg is one of the credited writers of the book that that “The Fifth Estate” is based on, which would explain why the film feels completely one sided.  I am not trying to defend the actions of Assange, but it feels like we are just getting half the story. 

Early on in “The Fifth Estate”, Daniel (Daniel Brühl) meets Julian (Benedict Cumberbatch) at a tech conference, and almost instantly wind up becoming colleagues. Julian claims to have a whole team of people leaking news for him and Daniel has absolutely no reason not to believe his new partner.  The pair wind up breaking some huge stories that gets the attention of a handful of nations.  Those in power want to shut down WikiLeaks and we really can’t blame them.  Even though the site does good by exposing the corrupt, it also can harm the innocent. 

I wish “The Fifth Estate” spent more time giving us a feel for the impact of the site, rather than the childish nature of the two men that built it.  I felt like everything led to a “he said, she said” war and that is just a complete waste.  There is no denying that Cumberbatch is fantastic as Julian Assange, but that is the only positive thing I can say about “The Fifth Estate”.

By: Marc Ferman