WikiLeaks is in the air. Not as some toxic substance — literally, at least — but with a presence in cinema: following Alex Gibney‘s recent documentary We Steal Secrets, DreamWorks are preparing to release a narrative version of that same tale, The Fifth Estate. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the company’s controversial founder, Julian Assange, seen here from perspectives of both the self and the enemy — in this case, the U.S. government.
In our first look, Bill Condon — coming off the one-two… punch of the Breaking Dawn duology — would seem to have crafted exactly what’s expected of a movie following the creator of WikiLeaks; while this is not bad, little seen below is of genuine curiosity. (At the moment, all I’d really care to learn is how the project deals with rape allegations which have plagued Assange, arguably acting as a greater deterrent to public acceptance than bureaucratic scorn. It’d be hard not to so much as approach the topic.) A well-acted, respectably composed drama — while not bad on its own, natch — might be all that is reasonable to anticipate from this one.
Watch the trailer below:
Synopsis:
Triggering our age of high-stakes secrecy, explosive news leaks and the trafficking of classified information, WikiLeaks forever changed the game. Now, in a dramatic thriller based on real events, THE FIFTH ESTATE reveals the quest to expose the deceptions and corruptions of power that turned an Internet upstart into the 21st century’s most fiercely debated organization. The story begins as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl) team up to become underground watchdogs of the privileged and powerful. On a shoestring, they create a platform that allows whistleblowers to anonymously leak covert data, shining a light on the dark recesses of government secrets and corporate crimes. Soon, they are breaking more hard news than the world’s most legendary media organizations combined. But when Assange and Berg gain access to the biggest trove of confidential intelligence documents in U.S. history, they battle each other and a defining question of our time: what are the costs of keeping secrets in a free society—and what are the costs of exposing them?”
Also starring Daniel Brühl, Stanley Tucci, Laura Linney, and Anthony Mackie, The Fifth Estate will arrive on October 11.
What are your first impressions from this trailer? Is Assange’s story worth chronicling?