The Fifth Estate!!!!

The Fifth Estate.

A film that struck a chord with me that I looked forward to seeing was this one, the main reason being that I am a Journalism graduate, how this happened I will never know. So being a person who has done a Journalism degree, got the batman cape and the piece of paper it obviously sounded like an interesting idea for a film. 

Starting with some fast moving news images you see how the information can be broadcast around the world from phones to laptops to TV screens. it's a clever little fast paced montage of how images, text and video can be accessed around the world by everyone on the planet. The film of course follows the story of Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) as he starts up his website WikiLeaks in order to leak important information to the public for them to see the truth and corruption that is happening everyday in politics. As Assange works in various countries to take down powerful leaders he arrives at a conference to be met by Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Bruhl) who is an activist and wants to help Assange with his website. 

As the film progresses more and more information is leaked, a most famous video that shows US military forces gunning down civilians and reuters journalists was to be leaked and hit people hard. With Assange working with the newspaper the Guardian and in particular the editor Alan Rusbridger (Peter Capaldi) they were to work out a deal. As the Guardian redacts some of the thousand documents that Assange has they were to publish pages of this information for Assange to pubish the un-redacted information. 

You see on screen the relationship between Assange and Berg slowly fall to pieces and both of them fighting for what they see is the best decision to make for the information they have. Seeing not only this but part of Assange's up bringing and what he had done to become the person he is today. Obviously we all know what the end result would be and what was to happen to Assange who is now holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy and fighting extradition. 

Cumberbatch plays Assange spookily well and he really does act and have Assange's mannerisms down to a tee. Having Assange e-mail him the day they were to start filming to say that he shouldn't do the film must have been hard but a story that needed to be told. Bruhl is ok but not as strong a character and force as Cumberbatch, both work well together on screen and portray and very tense and fraught relationship between Berg and Assange. 

In my own honest opinion when it comes down to leaking documents I see it that if documents were to leak, change a government and help people for the better then why not. Certainly information that could topple corrupt governments and change a countrys history for the better surely the documents should be leaked and read by all to see. It's when peoples lives are at risk that you have to take into account your own moral stand point and question your own ethics as to whether documents should be leaked. 

Back to the film and I have to say it is a good little thriller film that entertains, informs and lets you decide your own point of view on WikiLeaks. If your after something more meaty and full of information then I suggest you look elsewhere as this film is mainly just basic information and is here to entertain and not really inform much.

7/10