Julian Assange story falls flat Why Julian Assange is wrong Benedict Cumberbatch discusses his portrayal of Assange and labels of right and wrong in The Fifth Estate. PT4M7S http://www.smh.com.au/action/externalEmbeddedPlayer?id=d-2wy5h 620 349 November 5, 2013 Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars 4 votes Drama, Biopic Director Bill Condon Screen writer Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Luke Harding, David Leigh, Josh Singer Actors Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Brühl, Carice van Houten OFLC rating Yet to be classified Language English A biopic-lecture-thriller with earnest intentions, Bill Condon's The Fifth Estate is a handsomely mounted mish-mash of background details, narrative strands and assertions, with a bravura but distracting performance at its centre. It is about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks between 2007 and 2010, based on two books by people who had close contact with him and the organisation, one by English journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding, the other by German activist Daniel Domscheit-Berg. Adapted by Josh Singer, formerly a staff writer on The West Wing, The Fifth Estate kicks off with a clunky montage of media modes, from hieroglyphs to printing presses to the internet, interspersed with historic media comments: it's a bit like the opening credits of The Big Bang Theory, except that it's slower, and there's no obvious reason for it to be there. It reflects several of the movie's weaknesses, including over-simplification. Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange and Daniel Bruhl as Daniel Domscheit-Berg in The Fifth Estate. Photo: Dreamworks As Assange - mercurial, intense, charismatic - Benedict Cumberbatch gives a strong, engaged, convincing performance. But it's a characterisation at odds with everything else in the film. It's dramatically rounded but it derives a spurious sense of authenticity from the fact that everyone else in the film functions as a foil or speechmaker. That's true even of Daniel Bruhl's slightly more developed character, Domscheit-Berg, a German activist who worked with Assange between 2007 and 2010. Part of The Fifth Estate is an odd-couple relationship drama: Domscheit-Berg is depicted as a dogged idealist who's swept up by the force of Assange and his mission, then becomes disenchanted with his methods and his flaws, as well as his inability to handle the demands of dinner with a middle-class German family. There are other strands within the film. There are attempts to give a context to the stories brought to light through WikiLeaks. There are occasional surreal images that seem to stand for Assange's imaginative leaps and rhetorical strategies, or the nature of cyberspace. Stanley Tucci and Laura Linney give suave performances as a pair of high-ranking State Department staff whose activities and advice will come under scrutiny if WikiLeaks publishes its cache of diplomatic cables with names and identifying details intact. There's even a sub-subplot involving one of Linney's friends and sources, whose life and family will be in danger if his name is revealed. As a film about the WikiLeaks phenomenon, The Fifth Estate gives us both too much and not enough. It strives for the appearance of fairness, but gets caught between two attitudes towards a character: most of its energy goes into a portrayal of Assange that pushes the film towards a hero-or-villain-or-both story that sells its subject short.