The Fifth Estate
Touchstone Pictures | Release Date: October 18, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
49
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 42 Critic Reviews
Positive:
9
Mixed:
31
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanOct 16, 2013
The Fifth Estate is flawed (it grips the brain but not the heart), yet it feverishly exposes the tenor of whistle-blowing in the brave new world, with the Internet as a billboard for anyone out to spill secrets. Call it the anti-social network. Read full review
80
Total FilmPhilip KempOct 7, 2013
With a riveting portrayal by Cumberbatch at its heart, The Fifth Estate tells its story grippingly - but finally leaves us none the wiser. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperOct 17, 2013
At times The Fifth Estate seems as cutting-edge as the 21st century techno-info revolution it portrays. On other occasions... it’s almost like an expensive “Funny or Die” bit. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsOct 17, 2013
This thriller about the game-changing website Wikileaks is as smart about cyberspace as “The Social Network,” but there’s a glitch when it shifts the focus from felonious leaders to the misdemeanors of the man who exposed them. Read full review
75
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreOct 15, 2013
The aloof, guarded Cumberbatch plays Assange as a mixture of brilliance, hucksterism, ego and naivete. He carries the baggage of an actor who plays “smart,” with a menacing edge. Read full review
65
NPRMark JenkinsOct 18, 2013
As The Fifth Estate excitedly illustrates, in the Internet age no one can ever really have the last word. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliOct 20, 2013
Perhaps the most curious and counterproductive aspect of The Fifth Estate, the so-called "Wikileaks movie," is the decision by director Bill Condon and screenwriter Josh Singer to establish the film as a thriller. Read full review
63
USA TodayClaudia PuigOct 17, 2013
The Fifth Estate doesn't seem to be presenting the full story. Instead, it's a fairly dull thriller about a hugely influential Internet phenomenon. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter TraversOct 17, 2013
The Fifth Estate is stuck running in place. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranOct 17, 2013
Whenever The Fifth Estate leaves the involving one-on-one drama between Assange and Domscheit-Berg, you wish it wouldn't. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzOct 17, 2013
Instead of delving into the moral questions WikiLeaks asks by its very existence, Condon gives those a passing nod in a couple of weak subplots. Read full review
60
Time Out LondonDave CalhounOct 8, 2013
It’s adequate and often fun, but no match for Cumberbatch’s talents: physically, his Assange is far more complex and intriguing than most of the things we hear him say or see him do. Read full review
60
The TelegraphTim RobeySep 15, 2013
Benedict Cumberbatch is inspiredly cast, serving up a technically ingenious performance which may be his juiciest ever. Read full review
60
The GuardianCatherine ShoardSep 15, 2013
This is highly competent catnip for the watercooler crowd. Read full review
58
Portland OregonianMarc MohanOct 17, 2013
In retrospect, and with no disrespect meant, it may have been a mistake to entrust a story this polarizing to Bill Condon, the filmmaker who most recently made “Twilight: Breaking Dawn,” and “Dreamgirls.” Read full review
58
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallOct 17, 2013
Cumberbatch is very good, in a movie that isn't. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubBen KenigsbergOct 16, 2013
Giving the kind of mannered performance that seems predicated on careful mimicry of 60 Minutes, Cumberbatch impresses without ever coming across as more than an abstraction. Read full review
58
Film.comJordan HoffmanSep 15, 2013
For a film that reminds use over and over that this is a whole new world, this movie feels awfully familiar. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleLouis BlackOct 23, 2013
Ultimately, the story becomes one of personalities, which seems inevitable but narrows the accomplishments and ambitions of its focus. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireOct 18, 2013
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. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerOct 18, 2013
The omnipresent Benedict Cumberbatch plays Assange, stringy white-gray hair flowing, and Daniel Brühl is Domscheit-Berg. Condon and his screenwriter Josh Singer don’t quite know what to make of this duo, perhaps because the men didn’t quite know what to make of each other, either. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayOct 17, 2013
As a piece of filmed entertainment, The Fifth Estate shows why things like authorial point of view and visual sensibility are so essential in bringing such stories to life. Unlike its most obvious predecessor, “The Social Network,” this film doesn’t have much of either, and the weakness shows. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. ScottOct 17, 2013
This version of the WikiLeaks story, directed by Bill Condon from a script by Josh Singer, is a moderate snoozefest, undone by its timid, muddled efforts at fair-mindedness. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleOct 17, 2013
Not entirely successful or appealing - not exactly a delightful evening in the company of scintillating characters - but interesting all the same. Read full review
50
SalonAndrew O'HehirOct 17, 2013
This movie isn’t terrible enough to derail the “Sherlock Holmes” star’s upward trajectory toward pop-culture domination, but Cumberbatch’s subtle and intriguing performance as the inscrutable Aussie loner behind WikiLeaks is surrounded by a plodding and minor melodrama that’s ludicrously ill suited to the material. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy BurrOct 17, 2013
The Fifth Estate is itself the response of an entrenched and corporatized information system toward something it barely comprehends. It makes a media format that has sustained us for decades — the two-hour movie — feel like a 20th-century dinosaur. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldConnie OgleOct 17, 2013
Assange is a compelling figure that merited a better effort. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsOct 17, 2013
We're snowed by a great deal of intersecting and crisscrossing information in The Fifth Estate, and Singer's script lacks organizational skills. I can relate. But that doesn't make parsing this busy film, or — crucially — its true, contradictory feelings about Assange any easier. Read full review
50
ObserverRex ReedOct 16, 2013
Timely but sluggish and confusing. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeSep 15, 2013
The most compelling thing here by far is the film's vision of Assange, by all accounts a man of enormous self-regard and slippery ethics. Benedict Cumberbatch has the character in hand from the start. Read full review
50
VarietyDennis HarveySep 15, 2013
Both the kindest and most damning thing you can say about The Fifth Estate is that it primarily hobbles itself by trying to cram in more context-needy material than any single drama should have to bear. Read full review
50
IndieWireEric KohnSep 15, 2013
An uneven, intermittently thoughtful but largely preachy overview of WikiLeaks' rising influence that has less of an issue determining Assange's character than it does with telling a compelling story. Read full review
42
The PlaylistKevin JagernauthSep 15, 2013
A lack of courage on behalf of the filmmakers to take any position renders the film narratively limp. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinOct 20, 2013
The lesson of this is that there’s no easy way to dramatize the story of Julian Assange and that trying to turn it into a conventional melodrama is not just politically irresponsible but dull-witted. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanOct 17, 2013
What a letdown it is to see this spellbinding, era-defining story tamed into such stodgy submission. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternOct 17, 2013
The Fifth Estate gives us an obsessive-compulsive messiah with a taste for martyrdom, and full-screen cascades of computer code in place of a coherent plot. Exhausting in a new way, the movie is a data dump devoid of drama. Read full review
40
The DissolveKeith PhippsOct 17, 2013
Condon seems to hope energetic staging and furrowed brows will compensate for a script that’s essentially an exchange of halfhearted arguments. Read full review
40
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlOct 15, 2013
The issues at play here are fascinating, but Condon and Singer never let any argument about journalism or the philosophy of free information last longer than a couple ping-ponged lines between master (Assange) and student (Domscheit-Berg). Read full review
40
Time OutKeith UhlichOct 15, 2013
Brühl, meanwhile, is saddled with the unenviable task of being this hollow movie’s slow-dawning voice of reason: His climactic conversation with newspaper editor David Thewlis (never worse) is one of the most embarrassingly didactic Way We Live Now™ summations ever filmed. Read full review
40
EmpireAdam SmithOct 7, 2013
Disappointingly dull account of a tale desperately in need of a sharper screenplay and some directorial vim. Might as well wait for the Blu-ray, Jules. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineR. Kurt OsenlundOct 15, 2013
The film is guilty of some of the same quick judgment it clearly doesn't endorse, exploiting Julian Assange's unmistakable appearance to help give itself a boogeyman. Read full review
25
New York PostKyle SmithOct 17, 2013
Hire “Dreamgirls” director Bill Condon to tell the story of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks? Sure, and next let’s hear from Lady Gaga on the Higgs boson particle. Read full review
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