DVD Review – The Fifth Estate

As you’re on the Internet right now reading these very words, I assume you’ve at least heard of Wikileaks and Julian Assange its white-haired founder. Wikileaks, for better or worse, has changed modern journalism immensely and had altered the way information is disseminated forever. It’s a hot topic and worthy of a film, but is The Fifth Estate the right way to go about it? Erm…

The Fifth Estate tells the story of Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl) who meets Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) at a computer convention and soon gets sucked into Assange’s world of secrets and cyber Robin Hoodery. We follow the pair as events lead up to the biggest leak in US Military history, painting a very different picture of the Iraq war and the military occupation. The actors are all decent. Cumberbatch steals the show as Assange, playing him as a semi-creepy, twitchy man buzzing with passion and energy. It’s a decent performance and certainly a good imitation. Brühl plays the film’s moral core and does well in an underwritten role. Laura Linney, Stanley Tucci, David Thewlis and Peter Capaldi all show up and do their bits admirably, but the film doesn’t really have time for them.

The film starts off with some jittery cyber titles in the vein of something like the Bourne films. It wants to be seen as a sort of techno-thriller, bristling with relevance and issues torn from the headlines. Thing is, I had a real problem with this. It’s an immature take on something that needs strong character focus and time to let scenes breathe. The interesting part isn’t the actual act, as we all know about that, it’s the people behind it. The film seems bent on going all artsy on us one minute and realistic shaky camm-y the next. It’s as schizophrenic as Assange is said to be. The hyper editing doesn’t disguise the fact that the film is often unengaging and plodding. The writing is all over the place. Assange is apparently a monologue-shitting machine and I mentally checked out a few times when the film insisted on being super-obvious for any dumboids that may have accidentally sat down to watch it.

The film is an odd beast. It definitely paints Assange as the bad guy, but does so under the guise of objectivity. I’m no expert on the whole situation. To be honest, I don’t know how I feel about it all. I can see both sides of the argument. I’m not patient enough to wade through page after page of boring stats and stuff. I wanted to learn about it in a medium I understand and love. After watching it, I was left more confused than anything else and felt further from any tangible information than when I started. Some have postulated that the reason the film is so anti-Wikileaks is due to the distributing studio Paramount having close financial ties with the military, thanks to the uber noisy but incredibly popular Transformers sequels. I’m not sure if that’s entirely the case, but I’m certainly looking for some explanation as to why I feel like I’ve been fed two hours of half-truths.

I’m really not sure what to make of The Fifth Estate. I really wanted to like it. The performances are great, but the direction and writing are sloppy. I felt it was holding me at arms’ length the entire time, only to turn round at the end and deny it to my face. I can’t really recommend it to anyone outside of the ravenous Cumberbitches out there.

[rating=2]

Ben Browne

Genre:
Drama, Thriller
Distributor:
eOne UK
Rating: 15
BD/DVD Release Date:
17th February 2014 (UK)
Director:
Bill Condon
Cast:
Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Brühl, Carice van Houten, David Thewlis
Buy The Fifth Estate: [Blu-ray] or [Blu-ray]