With Edward Snowden dominating the news for the past couple of weeks, I suppose it's fitting that the first trailer for the WikiLeaks film THE FIFTH ESTATE has arrived, as well as three new images. The film focuses on the site's editor-in-chief and founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) as well as former website spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl), and comes from director Bill Condon (KINSEY, DREAMGIRLS).
Julian Assange has his supporters and critics, and there are plenty of opinions on if Assanage (and others like him such as Snowden) should be treated as a hero or traitor. But looking at THE FIFTH ESTATE only as a movie and nothing more, it seems like it could be an intense little ride. Cumberbatch is probably the big draw, but the rest of the cast is pretty impressive too, including Stanley Tucci and Laura Linney. I've noticed some people commenting that it looks like an HBO movie, but really is that a bad thing? I've seen plenty of HBO films that look a million times better than some of the shit that gets tossed on to the big screen.
Synopsis:
Through the eyes of Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl), an early supporter and eventual colleague of Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch), the film follows the heady, early days of Wikileaks to its abrupt end after a series of controversial and history changing info leaks. The website's overnight success brought instant fame to its principal architects, but as their power expanded across the globe, Daniel grew increasingly disillusioned with Julian's questionable tactics and ethics. The rift between the two friends became irreparable and their ideological differences tore them apart, but not before they revolutionized, for better and worse, the flow of information to news media and the world at large.
THE FIFTH ESTATE leaks into theaters October 11th, 2013.
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