The Fifth Estate: Edgy but coloured

The Fifth Estate
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Brühl, Anthony Mackie, David Thewlis
Rated: 5/10
As WikiLeaks was all about Julian Assange, The Fifth Estate is all about Benedict Cumberbatch. Hold on, wasn’t that the baddie in the latest Star Trek mount? There, he made a huge impact and here too, as Assange, he takes all your applause. He simmers, explodes and generally blows you away by his dogged, devious but determined demeanour which leaves you definitely uncomfortable about being with a fellow so silently ferocious.
Apparently, in real life, Assange is said to be pretty much the same though he has been highly critical of the film which shows him up as an unscrupulous revolution maker leaking classified documents which rocked Governments all over world — all the way up from the US. But sadly, there is not much about the history of  WikiLeaks here or how the story unfolded for this website which was new and beyond any form of journalism, even more smouldering than citizen journalist quick posts.
The story is more of an emotional drama between Assange and his associate-turned-foe-turned-liquidator Daniel Domschiet Berg and how the latter saw Assange. His girlfriend frankly tells him one day in disgust that “you will never be Assange” and he lives through the movie to realise that at leisure. Assange doesn’t like competition or even a hint of it in his “volunteers” and when Daniel starts getting important, he throws him out without premise.  He insults his parents with casual audacity and treats his girlfriend as furniture, walking into their apartment in the middle of the night not with apologies but as if he owns it and him!
Based on a book by Daniel, it would have been very surprising had the film been even slightly charitable to Assange and his eccentricities. So, to see him as this edgy guy with a bad childhood doesn’t really convince you about his real personality. Also, besides the characters of Assange and Daniel, nothing else is fleshed out so your involvement in it will be limited to the duo.
The moot point of this film should have essentially been the impact of  WikiLeaks around some of its biggest leaks, and not entirely on a relationship between a genius and his Man Friday. However, see it for Cumberbatch’s high-level performance.

Source: Sunday Pioneer, October 27, 2013

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nil Battey Sannata: Endearing, real and simple

Cast :  Swara Bhaskar, Ratna Pathak Shah, Pankaj Tripathi Rated :  8/10 Nil Battey Sannata is a confusing title but an endearing, simple, gentle and real film. Besides, the title confuses only till Swara Bhaskar as Chanda explains it to you with endearing simplicity much ahead in the movie. It literally means zero understanding and zero marks — in her and her daughter’s case, in Mathematics. But this one is not just about the mind-boggling numbers that have become the bane of students and parents alike. It is about the maths, algebra and geometry of life itself — an equation that director Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari puts on the blackboard in an engaging, simplified format. Nil Battey Sannata  is a film sitting on a very real firmament, a very you-and-me story about the in-your-face problems that everyone encounters. In here, it is about misrani  (cook) Chanda and her full of life but anti-studies daughter Apeksha Sahay’s daily churn. Thankfully, it is not the drudg...
Read more

Criminal: Arresting memory transplant

Cast : Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, Ryan Reynolds, Jordi Mollà Rated : 6/10 Big names, big imagination and good execution make this memory transplant thriller a good one to be with, especially with Kevin Costner doing a pretty good job with a character he has never played – that of an emotionless, incarcerated, brutal killer in whose brain a do-good, wife and daughter loving dead CIA’s agent’s (Ryan Reynolds) remembrances are inserted for a trail that is important for the organisation. The underdone role has been handled well by Costner, much like a successful experiment. As he gets acquainted with emotions of love, caring and affection that have been alien to him, he starts turning from a monster to a human being but the director does well to not completely erase his original personality. So, there is a mix and match, there is brutal violence as also gentle gestures, like battering a man to death in a car hijack and saving a hair brush for the little one. The f...
Read more

Mission impossible: Rogue nation -- Ethan Hunt back with bang

Staring:  Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Sean Harris, Jeremy Reyner & Rebecca Ferguson Rated : 8/10 Last time Ethan Hunt had your jaw dropping and you praying fervently for his life when mounted the sky scraping Burj Khalifa in Dubai to dangle from dizzying heights. This time, he does the same — and in all earnestness — when he dangles from the outer door of a military aircraft carrying nerve gas all those 20,000 feet high swaying with terrifying winds, hanging on to dear life literally with his finger nails. This is the fifth time since 1996 that Tom Cruise, as the inscrutable Ethan Hunt, has kept his promise of entertaining his loyal viewers with thrills, fills, kills and a little bit of unsaid romance — of course with a fellow agent. Rogue Nation was initially being touted as the last of the Mission Impossible series but seeing the youthfulness of Hunt, and probably the meticulously ‘kept-high’ entertainment value that this James-Bond lookalike series always delivers, C...
Read more