This complex real-life drama tells the story of Australian internet activist Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his website WikiLeaks
This complex real-life drama tells the story of Australian internet activist Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his website WikiLeaks.
The absorbing film focuses on the years leading up to the notorious whistleblower site’s massive leak of secret US government documents in 2010.
Given the events being covered, it's no wonder that the script sometimes creaks under the strain of putting all the elements of the story on screen, but the film benefits enormously from a brilliant performance by Cumberbatch, who nails Assange's complex mix of genius, arrogance, paranoia and autism-spectrum social dysfunction, and pulls off a flawless Australian accent into the bargain.
There's good support, too, from Daniel Brühl as Assange's disillusioned right-hand man, German computer activist Daniel Domscheit-Berg, on whose book the film is partly based.
