The Information Age

The Fifth Estate

In 1976, there was a little film made about a scandal that happened in 1972. The story takes place in and around Washington D.C. The film stars Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford as two journalists that covered the scandal for the Washington Post. The scandal, which I am sure you can only imagine, had major political implications. The scandal was Watergate and the film All the President’s Men. One of the most influential films of the 70s if not the 20^th century and garnered many awards during that awards season. In 2013, director Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Chicago) tried to recapture that magic with The Fifth Estate.

Please bear with me because this film that is hard to put into synopsis. The story takes place from 2007 to 2010 and is essentially about the rise of the website WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. The website is designed to “leak” news information with the protection of amenity. For those three years, WikiLeaks provided the world with various news reports ranging from Scientology to what Sarah Palin had in her inbox. However, the biggest story of the websites short life was that of classified war documents that the U.S. government would have like to have stayed classified.

Now not to bore you with all those details, the film is a sort of outsiders view on what Assange is really like as a person, how he interacts with people, and little flashes of what his childhood was like. That outsiders' point of view is his business partner Daniel Domscheit-Berg who helped build WikiLeaks to what people know it today.

Now with all of that aside, this film was very hard to follow. I had briefly heard about the Afghan War Logs story so I knew a little about that, but the film does so little to explain really anything else. The film speeds through the first couple of years with little bits of what the website covers. The film does a decent job trying to promote what WikiLeaks is about, meaning that the website is about non-filtering information and providing the world with such information. Other than that, the movie moves so fast (even at 2hrs 8mins) that you can hardly latch on to any of what the movie is trying to throw at you. Benedict Cumberbatch does another great job in this film as Assange. I really think that he was the only person that saved this movie from being a complete disaster. The other actors kind of mill about but as I said before, the pace is so fast that you cannot really build any type of relationship with any of the other characters.

I did not really like the directing of the film either. Condon tries to make this simple story into a flashy Hollywood political thriller. At times, he tries to make it have the feel of a bad James Bond/Jason Bourne spy thriller as well. Both come off very badly. Researching what the film was based on I can see why Condon tried to Hollywoodize the story, because this is a simple story about a website that has no filter.

If you are a fan of Cumberbatch, which I think I am becoming, then check this film out. Even if it is just for his performance alone and nothing else. However, if you want a good political thriller, than may I suggest All the President’s Men or The Ides of March starring George Clooney and Ryan Gosling.

The Verdict: Watch on Cable