The Fifth Estate Review

People from Wikileaks looking astounded in The Fifth Estate

Photo Credit: Dreamworks Pictures

The Fifth Estate

C

A Review by Frederick Cholowski

In this modern day with so many films in theaters demanding attention it’s easy to get caught into “generic film syndrome”. Films that fit in this category are those that come and go without a particular weight or meaning, or for that matter have anything that defines them as special. They just come and go in a state of mediocrity and are most likely forgotten right after being viewed. The Fifth Estate, Hollywood’s retelling of the story of Julian Assange is one of those films; a frustrating film that switches through mindless exposition and lecturing the audience about the mindless exposition. The Fifth Estate is neither smart nor fun, it’s just generic.

The plot follows the creation and uprising of the online whistle blowing haven called Wikileaks through the prospective of one the main people who helped it grow and change Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brül). The plot revolves mostly around his interactions with Wikileaks creator Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and how their partnership grew and changed over the course of the various leaks that they facilitated to their site. The most important of these events comes in 2010 where the two have the responsibility of leaking many, many documents and wires about US activity in Pakistan. This leak tests their relationship as well as the way information works around the world.

The main problem with The Fifth Estate is that, despite the massive amount of potential, none of the material is presented in a fashion that is either interesting or compelling. It’s all really blandly told especially within the writing. Dialogue has absolutely no flair to it whatsoever and all it is used for is to get from one point to another. It never feels like there is an actual conversations taking place in the film, instead the dialogue is really used as one big plot moving device.

Another problem is the other use for all the dialogue, and that’s lecturing the audience. Between the constant need to move the plot forward through dialogue is the need to lecture the audience about its plot and themes. There is a point in the film where it seems like the characters are literally directly lecturing to the audience about things that are literally repeated about four times beforehand. It’s awful at the best of times, as it’s really overbearing and makes treats the audience as if they are stupid and don’t understand anything that is going on throughout the film.

What makes things worse is that this film also seems to have no characters or any idea of character development whatsoever. The caricatures that are present are essentially plot moving and lecturing devices. It’s sad as this subject and these people are actually interesting subjects and people and this is an extremely wasted opportunity. The caricatures just kind of move around in space, moving from one point to another without giving any sense of personality, likability, or depth what so ever.

The one thing that saves the film from being really bad is the performance by Benedict Cumberbatch. Cumberbatch is fantastic given the small amount of character that he is given, as most of the time he actually resembles Julian Assange. It’s the one thing that shines in this film and Cumberbatch continues to prove himself quite the actor. The rest of the cast is generic and doesn’t really add or detract anything from the film. Really they are there to be plot movers so it’s not like their job is all that challenging acting wise anyways.

Visually the film at times looks much more like a home video than an actual film. The film’s look, like the dialogue, has absolutely nothing special about it. It just makes the film look generic and then at points strange as some shots linger too long or are so generically composed that it seems out of place in a film that’s trying to be a modern, hip thriller. It just looks cheap and bland; Oh and that tech backdrop and the strange and stupid dream metaphor room used throughout the film don’t help either and help the film look cheaper. The score is filled with strange and at times obnoxious electronic tracks that, like the rest of the film, just kind of blend into nothingness.

The Fifth Estate is a film that despite its interesting subject matter, is very, very hard to recommend. It’s so generic and bland in every way and even at that generic in a poorly executed way. The film ultimately feels like a machine trying to get from point a to point b without a purpose or general idea of what makes these kind of tech bio picks interesting. Add another film to the list of patients that suffer from “generic film disease.”