The Fifth Estate

The story of Julian Assange and Wikileaks is probably more important than it is interesting. Unless you’re a First Amendment scholar, there’s not a whole lot of drama to leaking government documents. And Assange, as time has shown, is not really a personality people are going to warm up to. In The Fifth Estate, Benedict Cumberbatch does his dead-level best as Assange, creating a fully formed character out of a guy who’s frankly become all too easy to dismiss. There are some moments of depth here, debating the merits of leaking classified material that inarguably is in the public interest, but they’re obscured behind a biopic of Assange as seen through the eyes of his right-hand man, (Daniel Bruhl). For better results, see the 2013 documentary on this same subject, We Steal Secrets, from the director of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.