Working on the
“Twilight” films must have sent director Bill Condon to an eternal junior high
hell of filmdom because his new drama “The Fifth Estate” –- about
Julian Assange -– plays to the lowest IQ who will walk into a cinema, expecting
history retold. This is history for people who don’t read. We all know of
Assange and his WikiLeaks website and the mass files he unleashed, gutting U.S.
bravado with footage of an army helicopter crew mowing down innocents, and dumping
State Department files on U.S. spy infrastructure. Condon assumes we don’t and goes
for obvious at every turn. When an Assange protégé (Daniel Brühl) dumps
WikiLeaks’ main server, we flash to the man smashing up make-believe desks and computers,
setting fire to all around him. Just in case anyone fails to grasp “delete.”
I was done before the end, tired of drivel talk such as “He’s bigger
than the New York Times!,” but Condon has more. Benedict
Cumberbatch -– smartly cast and a shade creepy as Assange -- breaks the screen wall, stares out, and
tells us to get angry and find the truth, and I was glad to get up. And go out
the door. C
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