I personally liked the film, which had a lot of suspense and superb acting.
My issues with the film lie with the script, that seems to show Julian Assange as somewhat of an antagonist, although not all the way. The script is based on a book by Daniel Berg, a former colleague of Wikileaks who as since fallen out with Assange, which doesn't pan out as trustworthy source. I also felt it was made a bit too soon and could have benefited from being made in a couple of years.
In the film, everything about Assange portrays him as a man who is increasingly untrustworthy while being in charge of a website which exposes all kinds of corruption in different countries, and which fiercely protects its sources. Through Daniel Berg's point of view, as a person, Assange is an odd, anti-social egomaniac who constantly invents stories about how his hair grew white, cares very little about the consequences coming after the exposure of corruption through the leaks, not thinking things through and is sometimes mean, cold and condescending towards individuals and his friends and family.
Despite the positive things about him, such as his charisma, determination to change the world and the fantastic, wonderful things that his website Wikileaks has done, by the end of the film, he is still made out to be a liar and manipulator, wanted for rape in Sweden; a bad guy who's done a good thing with his website.
Benedict Cumberbatch is absolutely brilliant as Julian Assange, and succeeds in portraying Assange as a complex, three dimensional character, something the script was not at all prepared to do. The real Assange dismissed the film as propaganda and politely asked the actor not appear in the film.
My other issue with the movie is that they hardly focused anything on Chelsea (formally Bradley) Manning, the soldier who leaked the most voluminous and controversial documents in history. Here also, Assange is shown to seemingly care only about showing the world's most valuable secrets, and not think about the repercussions that Manning faces because of her leaking the documents (Assange publicly praised Manning as a hero for the exposure of the US military documents)
Maybe Assange is vain and hates that a film portrays him for who he really is (as it seems the same for many people who worked closely with him) or maybe he's right and the truth was not obtained through this film. But one thing is for sure, the whole truth of many things will probably never be known.
My issues with the film lie with the script, that seems to show Julian Assange as somewhat of an antagonist, although not all the way. The script is based on a book by Daniel Berg, a former colleague of Wikileaks who as since fallen out with Assange, which doesn't pan out as trustworthy source. I also felt it was made a bit too soon and could have benefited from being made in a couple of years.
In the film, everything about Assange portrays him as a man who is increasingly untrustworthy while being in charge of a website which exposes all kinds of corruption in different countries, and which fiercely protects its sources. Through Daniel Berg's point of view, as a person, Assange is an odd, anti-social egomaniac who constantly invents stories about how his hair grew white, cares very little about the consequences coming after the exposure of corruption through the leaks, not thinking things through and is sometimes mean, cold and condescending towards individuals and his friends and family.
Despite the positive things about him, such as his charisma, determination to change the world and the fantastic, wonderful things that his website Wikileaks has done, by the end of the film, he is still made out to be a liar and manipulator, wanted for rape in Sweden; a bad guy who's done a good thing with his website.
Benedict Cumberbatch is absolutely brilliant as Julian Assange, and succeeds in portraying Assange as a complex, three dimensional character, something the script was not at all prepared to do. The real Assange dismissed the film as propaganda and politely asked the actor not appear in the film.
My other issue with the movie is that they hardly focused anything on Chelsea (formally Bradley) Manning, the soldier who leaked the most voluminous and controversial documents in history. Here also, Assange is shown to seemingly care only about showing the world's most valuable secrets, and not think about the repercussions that Manning faces because of her leaking the documents (Assange publicly praised Manning as a hero for the exposure of the US military documents)
Maybe Assange is vain and hates that a film portrays him for who he really is (as it seems the same for many people who worked closely with him) or maybe he's right and the truth was not obtained through this film. But one thing is for sure, the whole truth of many things will probably never be known.