'The Fifth Estate' tries too hard to tell the audience what to think of Julian Assange
Julian Assange is a movie waiting to happen and it鈥檚 happened twice, with Alex Gibney鈥檚 terrific documentary 鈥淲e Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks鈥欌�� and now Bill Condon鈥檚 鈥淭he Fifth Estate,鈥� a jittery talkathon based primarily on the memoir of the WikiLeaks founder鈥檚 formerly trusted lieutenant, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, as well as a 2011 expose by British journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding.
The omnipresent Benedict Cumberbatch plays Assange, stringy white-gray hair flowing, and Daniel Br眉hl is Domscheit-Berg. Condon and his screenwriter Josh Singer don鈥檛 quite know what to make of this duo, perhaps because the men didn鈥檛 quite know what to make of each other, either.
Most often Assange comes across as a hubristic, tantrum-throwing egomaniac whose desire for justice and transparency takes second place to his avidity for celebrity. It鈥檚 a weirdly inventive performance in a movie that otherwise keeps telling us what to think about the man who unleashed the largest leak of official, un-redacted secrets in American history. 鈥淭yrants of the world should beware,鈥� says a Guardian writer (David Thewlis) about Assange at the end of the film. Would that it were that simple. Grade: C (Rated R for language and some violence.)
