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83The Fifth Estate is flawed (it grips the brain but not the heart), yet it feverishly exposes the tenor of whistle-blowing in the brave new world, with the Internet as a billboard for anyone out to spill secrets. Call it the anti-social network.
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Oct 7, 201380With a riveting portrayal by Cumberbatch at its heart, The Fifth Estate tells its story grippingly - but finally leaves us none the wiser.
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75The aloof, guarded Cumberbatch plays Assange as a mixture of brilliance, hucksterism, ego and naivete. He carries the baggage of an actor who plays “smart,” with a menacing edge.
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60It’s adequate and often fun, but no match for Cumberbatch’s talents: physically, his Assange is far more complex and intriguing than most of the things we hear him say or see him do.
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60Benedict Cumberbatch is inspiredly cast, serving up a technically ingenious performance which may be his juiciest ever.
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60This is highly competent catnip for the watercooler crowd.
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58For a film that reminds use over and over that this is a whole new world, this movie feels awfully familiar.
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50Timely but sluggish and confusing.
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50The most compelling thing here by far is the film's vision of Assange, by all accounts a man of enormous self-regard and slippery ethics. Benedict Cumberbatch has the character in hand from the start.
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50Both the kindest and most damning thing you can say about The Fifth Estate is that it primarily hobbles itself by trying to cram in more context-needy material than any single drama should have to bear.
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50An uneven, intermittently thoughtful but largely preachy overview of WikiLeaks' rising influence that has less of an issue determining Assange's character than it does with telling a compelling story.
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42A lack of courage on behalf of the filmmakers to take any position renders the film narratively limp.
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40The issues at play here are fascinating, but Condon and Singer never let any argument about journalism or the philosophy of free information last longer than a couple ping-ponged lines between master (Assange) and student (Domscheit-Berg).
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40Brühl, meanwhile, is saddled with the unenviable task of being this hollow movie’s slow-dawning voice of reason: His climactic conversation with newspaper editor David Thewlis (never worse) is one of the most embarrassingly didactic Way We Live Now™ summations ever filmed.
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40Disappointingly dull account of a tale desperately in need of a sharper screenplay and some directorial vim. Might as well wait for the Blu-ray, Jules.
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38The film is guilty of some of the same quick judgment it clearly doesn't endorse, exploiting Julian Assange's unmistakable appearance to help give itself a boogeyman.