The Fifth Estate (2013)

THE FIFTH ESTATE  (2013)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Bill Condon
    Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Brühl, Anthony Mackie,
    David Thewlis, Alicia Vikander, Laura Linney,
    Stanley Tucci, Peter Capaldi, Moritz Bleibtreu 
The cyberadventures of Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who blew the lid on a million secrets by hacking computer systems around the world and posting what he found online. The movie's not especially sympathetic to Assange. Played by Benedict Cumberbatch, he's an egotistical bastard who claims to be serving the common good by giving people the information that governments and corporations don't want them ever to have, but turns spiteful and malicious whenever the spotlight shifts away from him. Apart from that, you don't really learn much about Assange, and the allegations of sexual misconduct that drove him into exile are mentioned in passing only at the very end. He's a renegade genius - maybe that's what makes him attractive to his loyal team of hackers - but he's also, as one character accurately describes him, a manipulative asshole. He's made his mark, though, and the impact of that is still playing out. If the information genie has escaped from its digital bottle, it's at least partly because of Julian Assange.