Daniel Bruhl, Benedict Cumberbatch
“THE FIFTH ESTATE” My rating: C (Opens wide on Oct. 18)
128 minutes | MPAA rating: R
The meteoric rise and fall of Julian Assange and Wikileaks sounds like the stuff of great topical moviemaking.
If only.
The usually reliable Bill Condon (“Kinsey,” “Gods and Monsters,” “Dreamgirls” … oh, OK, and two “Twilight” movies) struggles mightily to make a story about people sitting at computers seem dynamic.
He fills the movie with flashing strobes and throbbing techno. His camera dances and swirls around the geeks bent over their terminals. There are ”Matrix”-type special effects with cataracts of glowing green numbers flooding across the screen.
But despite the presence of two of today’s best young actors — Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Bruhl — “The Fifth Estate” is dramatically stillborn.
Part of the problem is that the story is told from the perspective of a rather boring individual. Another drawback is that Assange himself keeps slipping in and out of focus.
While that slipperiness seems to be an essential part of the man’s character – leaving many of us with a love/hate relationship – it makes for frustrating movie going.
Our protagonist is Berlin computer geek Daniel Berg (Bruhl), who meets the then-unknown Aussie Assange (Cumberbatch) at a conclave of anarchistic cybertypes. Almost immediately Berg falls for the white-haired dynamo’s spiel about the need for a place on line where whistleblowers from around the world can submit their purloined and/or secret data in complete anonymity.
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