The Fifth Estate

The Fifth Estate is flawed (it grips the brain but not the heart), yet it feverishly exposes the tenor of whistle-blowing in the brave new world, with the Internet as a billboard for anyone out to spill secrets. Call it the anti-social network.

The Fifth Estate doesn't seem to be presenting the full story. Instead, it's a fairly dull thriller about a hugely influential Internet phenomenon.

In retrospect, and with no disrespect meant, it may have been a mistake to entrust a story this polarizing to Bill Condon, the filmmaker who most recently made “Twilight: Breaking Dawn,” and “Dreamgirls.”

As a piece of filmed entertainment, The Fifth Estate shows why things like authorial point of view and visual sensibility are so essential in bringing such stories to life. Unlike its most obvious predecessor, “The Social Network,” this film doesn’t have much of either, and the weakness shows.

We're snowed by a great deal of intersecting and crisscrossing information in The Fifth Estate, and Singer's script lacks organizational skills. I can relate. But that doesn't make parsing this busy film, or — crucially — its true, contradictory feelings about Assange any easier.

What a letdown it is to see this spellbinding, era-defining story tamed into such stodgy submission.

Hire “Dreamgirls” director Bill Condon to tell the story of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks? Sure, and next let’s hear from Lady Gaga on the Higgs boson particle.

Very good movie, i like it. Very good acting, it's very underrated. The trurth is power & Wikileaks is power. Really nice movie. Telling the truth. I like it very so much..

Visually, “The Fifth Estate” looks great. The cast is nothing but talented people doing an amazing job (especially Daniel Brühl and Benedict Cumberbatch). The music perfectly compliments the visuals and the editing is just fantastic. However, the story lacks the drama and tension it really needed and just fell completely flat. While not entirely terrible, the movie wasted its potential and is just average and, sort of, forgettable…the complete opposite of the controversy WikiLeaks started.

Had potential to be huge, but falls short. Still worth viewing though. The start of the film is fast paced and very difficult to focus. There are metaphors/symbolism used quite a bit through the start of the movie (and through the end) that are not fully understood until about 1/3 or 1/2 through the movie (an office filled with Assanges, which represents how, when Wikileaks was making a name for itself, people thought it had hundreds of people working on it, but all of them were Assange himself with different aliases), which left me with a half-baked understanding of the point what was trying to be made. Once the film did finally start getting rolling, again about 1/3 or 1/2 through, it was great, but harkening back to that first part of the movie, it could be been done much better. The movie also had great potential to send a message throughout, but the filmmakers chose to remain neutral as a whole, leaving the only person preaching the points to be Assange himself in the movie. So many messages could have been pushed through, but I suppose the need to remain neutral for mass appeal outweighed that. Only at the very end of the movie does a clear message come forth, when the Assange character is addressing you, the viewer, directly. So my main qualms with the movie are that it was a train wreck to get the plot set up, and no clear message came with the movie.

As Benedict Cumberbatch playing Julian Assange states during the course of this tedious Wiki leaks drama 'It's amazing that someone can speak for 10 minutes and say absolutely nothing'. This moment of insight sums up my reaction to this pompous and self congratulatory film, only instead of 10 minutes substitute about 90! The film starts slowly and never engagingly hooks the interest and the unfolding is confused and confusing for anyone not familiar with the case. The dialogue alternates between the banal and the pretentious and there is really just too much going on. I don't know how accurate the performances are but they provide little in way of compensation. When we get to the film's raison d'etre, the publication of thousands of government cables, interest is raised slightly, but by this point (around the 90 minute mark?) news of the missed opportunity that the film undoubtedly is has already been leaked.

terrible movie. not interesting at all. Tries to hype a situation and make a lot of political statements. Not worth the time it takes to watch. Terrible.