Friday, November 1, 2013

MOVIE - The Fifth Estate

R (2:04)
Wide release 10-13-2013
My annual Halloween night movie, 10-31-2013 at Park Place
RT: 37 Critic: Audience:  47
Cag: 3 liked it
Directed by Bill Condon & R. J. Cutler
Walt Disney Pictures

My comments:  I went to this movie so that I would understand exactly what all the ruckus is about on the news.  I guess I've only partially paid attention.  So now I know.Julian Assange, right from the beginning, was an unlikable oddball.  Oddballs are great - but he is one strange guy - at least he's portrayed as one.  The actor, Benedict Cumberbatch, was quite entrancing to watch.  As was the guy who played his devotee, his right hand man, Daniel.  It was a long movie, but totally held my interest.  And it makes me think about where I stand on the issue.

It was my annual Halloween movie-so-that-I-don't-have-to-be-home, and it wasn't playing until 7:05.  I was the only person there until the third preview, when one other person came in.  Strange feeling sitting in that huge theater (almost) all by myself!

Rotten Tomatoes:  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?

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