2013 was a break-out year for actor Benedict Cumberbatch. As if his playing (you know who) in “Star Trek Into Darkness” wasn’t enough, he also had roles in Awards Season contenders “12 Years a Slave”, “August: Osage County”, and “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”. And there was some early buzz surrounding Cumberbatch’s work as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in “The Fifth Estate”. He’s by far the best thing in the film, but his performance is not nomination worthy and can’t save this near-disaster.
Bill Condon is best known for directing the final two “Twilight” installments – “Breaking Dawn Pts. 1 and 2”. If that fact alone isn’t enough to destroy a resume he now has to add this misguided attempt to tell the WikiLeaks story to his credits. Condon uses a variety of visual tactics – computer graphics, news footage, and some unnecessary fantasy sequences to try get the audience hooked. None of it works.
Assange and WikiLeaks partner Daniel Berg (played by “Rush”‘s Daniel Bruhl) dominate the entire first hour. I quickly got tired of watching them type feverishly on their laptops, sending messages to each other. Assange recruits Berg to help him turn his idea of creating a place where people could leak critical information about wrongdoings going on around the world into a powerful and effective website. The film also examines the relationship between these two men, who start out with similar goals but then start to see things differently.
The main problem with “The Fifth Estate” is the dull script that’s based on not one, but two books. There are a few effective scenes, but not nearly enough. “Jobs”, another “start-up of a tech-based company” film from earlier this year, featured stronger performances and better storylines. Here we watch as Julian and Daniel go through their ups and downs over the first few years of the company, but at no point does Condon establish enough tension for us to care about the characters and their fates. The only “dramatic” moments come when laptop lids are slammed in frustration. At one point I became so uninterested in what was going on that I decided to pay attention to a (what would normally be distracting) spider that had somehow crawled onto the lens of the projector, and therefore appeared faintly giant on the screen. He also soon got bored and headed elsewhere.
Oscar nominees Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci lead the supporting cast as White House officials. They appear about halfway through and I was hoping could save the day. Unfortunately they’re in only three scenes together (fortunate for them). Anthony Mackie (“The Hurt Locker”) also has what amounts to a little more than a cameo.
“The Fifth Estate” is rated R for some language and a few violent moments. It’s appropriate for teens and up. There is one thing that makes this film stand-out: it features the weirdest epilogue I’ve ever seen, ending with a scene in which a character completely and intentionally discredits the entire movie. Simply bizarre.
On The Official LCJ Report Card, “The Fifth Estate” gets a C-. The WikiLeaks story is interesting and maybe, in the right hands, it could have been turned into a compelling and important film. But this isn’t that.