We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks

A good, but flawed documentary. Had it examined the ego of Julian Assange in more depth, which clearly drives the man to follow through with his own vision, no matter what trail of human destruction he leaves in his path. Since a lot of the events covered received widespread media coverage, viewers may be desensitized by the shocking details documented. Overall, a good watch, but ultimately a case of what could have been.

A piece of documentary film making can pick its topic and We Steal Secrets has picked WikiLeaks as its topic or so I thought when I started watching. What it really is, is a documentary about the perfect storm of Julian Assange despite the inherent promise in the title to tell the story of WikiLeaks. When Julian Assange and the men and women behind WikiLeaks brought down the Icelandic banks, people took notice and as Assange's leaks got more and more severe the nature of the information game changed, some say forever, others agree that this radical movement will fade. While Assange is a worthy topic of debate and discussion all We Steal Secrets seems to do is obfuscate the filed of view so much that its hard to interpret quite what happened during Assange's short and harmful time in the public eye. The story tries to keep you hooked but the story is shown from so many sides with differing accounts that you lose the plot in the swarm of information and half truths. The film tries not to depict him as a saint by showing the lives he has inadvertently ruined but it does try to justify his actions by painting him as a maverick, even going so far as to show Assange celebrating by dancing to Lady Gaga in a nightclub. It's a surreal image that will stick with you as the film nonchalantly glosses over certain aspects to try and maintain the delusional idea that WikiLeaks is a website of journalistic integrity despite Assange's bizarre actions towards the end of the film. Ultimately its WikiLeaks without any of the specifics as it concentrates on an interesting yet thoroughly corruptable person who in the end was exactly the person everyone thought he would turn out to be.