YOU CAN’T EXPOSE THE WORLD’S SECRETS WITHOUT EXPOSING YOURSELF.
In 2007, German journalist Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl) meets Australian computer hacker Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) in Berlin and begins working with him on a website devoted to exposing classified information provided by anonymous sources. Bill Condon’s portrait of the rise of WikiLeaks goes for an intense visual look as we follow how Assange and Domscheit-Berg fell out over how to handle the impact of the explosive WikiLeaks material. The film on the whole remains superficial though. Assange is depicted as selfish and ruthless; Cumberbatch is not easy to care about, and Brühl is bland.
2013-U.S. 128 min. Color. Widescreen. Directed by Bill Condon. Books: Daniel Domscheit-Berg (“Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website”), David Leigh, Luke Harding (“WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy”). Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch (Julian Assange), Daniel Brühl (Daniel Domscheit-Berg), Anthony Mackie (Sam Coulson), David Thewlis, Alicia Vikander, Laura Linney… Stanley Tucci, Peter Capaldi.
Trivia: James McAvoy was first cast as Daniel. Assange e-mailed Cumberbatch and asked him not to make the movie.
