The Fifth Estate

2013 • 128 minutes
3.7
428 reviews
36%
Tomatometer
R
Rating
Eligible
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About this movie

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?
Rating
R

Ratings and reviews

3.7
428 reviews
John Morris
February 14, 2014
This movie is pretty bad. I'm usually pretty lenient and find the good parts of a movie, but this one is just disappointing in about every way imaginable. I think the problem is that this story, in general, has the potential to be epic. However, the way it was told in this movie was just bad. The metaphor attempted just falls flat. There's very little "inside" detail that tells more than we already know. The acting is -ish. The overlayed text in the various parts attempting to reinforce the primary metaphor is poorly executed. About the only good thing I can say is that Benedict Cumberbatch is about as creepy in the movie as I imagine Assange himself to be in real life. That and somebody will probably re-make this in a few years and fix all the problems with this attempt.
11 people found this review helpful
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Rick Rodriguez
March 1, 2014
Terrible flick. No story. No character development. Its reliance on you having knowledge outside of the movie of WikiLeaks makes the movie fall flat on its face. Such a waste of Cumberbatch.
1 person found this review helpful
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Tasha K
February 4, 2014
I love benedict cumberbatch and all but this was not his best. It could've been better but the flow and transition of scenes were just weird. Hard to follow at times.
3 people found this review helpful
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