The Fifth Estate

Before Julian Assange decided to go off the deep end and hole himself up in an Ecuadoran Embassy in London, I was sort of behind him.  I agreed with his free speech, the world needs to know practices - up until his practices put lives in danger, and then of course, I was much less behind him.  From what I can tell, he was fairly harmless in the beginning as long as you weren't a crooked bank manager or a billion dollar company embezzling from investors.  But then he decided to play god with American lives (releasing thousands of documents relating to US assets in foreign countries without redaction)  thus gaining the moniker of enemy of the state.  The rest, of course is history: he's charged with rape and flees to the only embassy that will take him; Ecuador and lives out his days (for at least the last year or so) holed up only coming out to cause some commotion every once in a while.  

In theory, it's a fairly compelling story, full of lies and intrigue.  On paper or on film, as it was in The Fifth Estate, a great deal is lost in translation.  Now don't get me wrong, I've been wanting to see the film since I heard Benedict Cumberbatch would be playing Assange.  As is the case, Benedict could make the reading of a phone-book seem interesting, so I had no doubt that it would be stellar.  Even when every single review I read was negative, I was still determined to see it.  Oh what a waste!  It must be said that, half way through, I nodded off for a few minutes which may have something to do with my total and utter confusion as to what was happening, but not entirely I'm sure.

The acting itself was remarkable.  The greasy white hair and the vaguely Australian/South African accent he employed, seemed to make Benedict disappear completely until all that was left was Assange.  He played ego maniacal and unhinged quite convincingly and I wouldn't be surprised if he garnered at least one award nomination for his work; most likely a few more.  The main problem was the script itself.  Since Assange was a hacker, a great deal of the story focuses on hacking and computer code.  I may be in the minority, but it's utterly impossible to make bits and bytes appearing on a computer screen exciting - especially when you have no idea what those bits and bytes even mean.  Because of this, most scenes consist of little more than actors staring at code looking worried.  The other issue I had was that the writers never really took a side.  Love Assange or hate him - everyone has a black or white reaction to him.  The writers chose to skirt the issue of this and instead presented him as a freedom of speech crusader AND an ego maniacal control freak equally; never even addressing the scandal he's most known for these days (the rape charges) until a small post-script at the end.

In the end, I really, really wanted to like it.  After all, 2 hours staring at Benedict Cumberbatch couldn't be that bad, right?  But, he's such a good actor who completely transforms for roles that even his appeal couldn't save this bomb.  Here's hoping the other 20 or so movies he's in this year are better.