Saturday, October 19, 2013
The Fifth Estate Review - 2 Stars
“The Fifth Estate” begins with a brilliant montage of the development of journalism. That set up brings us to the life (so far) of Australian Julian Assange whose mission is to publish on the internet anything anybody with any power doesn’t want the world to know. The excellent actor Benedict Cumberbatch (he’s the guy who plays the modern Sherlock on PBS) spews dialog making his case for truth, justice, and I guess the Wikileaks way. I think “The Fifth Estate” wants to become the “All the President’s Men” of the internet age. But so many stories fly by described in so much dialogue visualized by so much typing that after a while the viewer gets lost. The internet has changed the world, but the movies about it continue to boil down to a lot of footage of fingers on keyboards and words on screens. Does it deliver what it promises? A nice try on a difficult to explain subject. Is it entertaining? Gave me a headache. Is it worth the price of admission? A disappointment.