"For a movie about a larger-than-life personality who shook up the world with his brazenness—and since has had to seek political asylum because of it—"The Fifth Estate" feels unfortunately small and safe."

""The Fifth Estate" seems more interested in contributing to a cult of personality, rather than cultivating a serious debate."

"Assange has gone to great lengths to discredit the movie. Considering that its portrayal of him is less than flattering, that's not surprising. The story closely follows the source material but there are open questions about the factual accuracy of those books. Condon uses a late scene in the movie to address Assange's criticisms by having the character, as played by Cumberbatch, complain about "the upcoming Wikileaks movie." It's a curious moment that seems to have been incorporated as a concession. It's the first time I can recall (at least in a serious-minded film) a character openly referring to the movie in which he is appearing. Cinematic recursion."

"Bill Condon's movie, which badly wants—and fails—to ape the suave approach of "The Social Network," streams with data and leaps from one city to the next, as the Times and other newspapers follow the lead of WikiLeaks. Whether you view Assange as a freedom fighter or as a sinister paranoiac is beside the point; however balanced the script, and for all the dexterity of Cumberbatch, the look of the film is entirely under his spell, and the result is as nervy and as excitable as the trade that it depicts."

"Benedict Cumberbatch — Julian Assange"

"Daniel Brühl — Daniel Domscheit-Berg"

"Anthony Mackie — Sam Coulson"

"David Thewlis — Nick Davies"

"Moritz Bleibtreu — Marcus"

"Alicia Vikander — Anke Domscheit-Berg"

"Stanley Tucci — James Boswell"

"Laura Linney — Sarah Shaw"

"Carice van Houten — Birgitta Jónsdóttir"

"Peter Capaldi — Alan Rusbridger"

"Dan Stevens — Ian Katz"

"Alexander Beyer — Marcel Rosenbach"

"Alexander Siddig — Dr. Tarek Haliseh"

"The video shows the brutal slaughter of two Reuters reporters. Here, we have firsthand evidence of the barbarity of war. A man, going to drop his children at school, sees another man bleeding to death on the pavement, stops to aid this civilian, and, in the process, is killed, and his vehicle turned one-hundred and eighty degrees by the sheer force of the Apache helicopter's thirty-millimetre bullets ripping into the side of the vehicle, miraculously not killing the two children inside."

"It takes two things to change the world, and you'd be surprised how many people have good ideas, but—commitment? true commitment?—that's the hard one. It requires sacrifice."

"Who ever thought that we'd need extra servers to fight censorship attacks from the "bastion of free speech"?"

"A government, destroyed by tyranny, rebuilt under a glass dome so the whole world could look in: there's an ideal to aspire to."

"And if the whistleblower's identity is secret, then he has nothing to fear."