The Fifth Estate

I have been getting very lucky lately. The Orlando Weekly was running a drawing for tickets to an advanced screening of The Fifth Estate. The movie is, "A dramatic thriller based on real events that 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." (-imdb)

This movie intrigued me from the start, but I'm not going to lie...Cumberbatch is one of the reasons I went to see it too.

I promise this will be a better review than the last one.

**Possible Spoilers Behind the Cut**




The director is Bill Condon, he is known for doing bio-pic-ish movies, as well as the occational TV movie and Twilight: Breaking Dawn 1 & 2. So from what I know walking into the movie, I like his works. Kinsey always sticks out to me for some reason.

The cast looks amazing, Benedict Cumberbatch (Julian Assange), Daniel Brühl (Daniel Berg), Peter Capaldi (Alan Rushbridger), Laura Linney (Sarah Shaw), and many others.

Walking into the movie I knew a minimal amount of information of what WikiLeaks is, who the man behind the site is, and other people involved. Like many bio-pics of a group of people shown from one man's perspective, people on the other side of the circle are not happy with the movie/story. Julian Assange has spoken out against the movie, and even penned a letter to Cumberbatch expressing his concerns. I totally get this, I'm not sure that everyone walks away 100% happy with how they are portrait in the eyes of someone else. Look at Captain Phillips, since the movie has been realeased the crew of his ship is speaking out against the captain and saying that he was no hero. Aside from that I think the most important thing I took away from this movie is the drive to learn more, to see other points of view and to try to grab the whole picture.

What would I rate this on my scales of F*ing awesome to Ugh! - I place this in the good/great range. I wouldn't mind paying for this, and actually I will probably see this again on dvd. The acting was great and engaging, the cinematography was good (definitely a movie to see from further back in the theater), all-in-all a good movie.

Do I think that this will win awards...maybe. I'm not even sure many people involved will be nominated. This movie may just slip right under the radar. Maybe Cumberbatch will be in the running, but there is a lot of good movies out right now and I think other, bigger budget movies will walk right by it.

If you're even a little big curious I would recommend it. For the ladies that are going just to see it for Benedict, he doesn't disappoint. ^_~