Underground: Die Julian Assange Story

This film left me with the reminder of how little Australians know about the largeness of the characters in our countries history. Loved the simple outline of Assange's formative years, which I had little knowledge of. Was very enjoyable seeing IT in the time frame in which his international involvement started. The reality of period IT equipment, home pieces, telephone exchange, cheap city student housing, police structure was entertaining as well as a reminder of we're this fitted in my background. Was also enjoyable fitting Assange history into the news events of the day that I recalled, The Family. The 'one liner' written across screen at end, about custody battle, single parent child raising, leaves me hanging for the rest of the Bio. Very enjoyable documentary, would recommend to all, for both entertainment in terms of Australian 'period' piece & understanding were Assange comes from.

The actor playing Julian is riveting.

The storyline about early hacking attempts and Woz' "blue box" used to intercept the old phone company mechanical relay system by spoofing tones was interesting to see.

The movie was heavy on technology specifics without giving short shrift to the storyline of Julian's life.

I loved the review of emerging Computer technology and the realistically portrayed old hardware.

I was amazed how often the "white hats" were forced to play catch up with the techniques of the early hacker culture.

Despite all the good reviews here, I have to say I found the Australian "Underground: The Julian Assange Story" slow and somewhat boring. Of course it can't compare to The Fifth Estate, which I actually sat through in the movies. Thanks to whomever arranged that deal for Benedict Cumberbatch, his career almost ended.

This one starts when Julian (Alex Williams) is young, and he, his mother (Rachel Griffiths) and his baby brother escape his stepfather, who wants to take the boys to a cult. His existence was a nomadic one; he lived in something like 30 cities growing up in Australia.

He gets into hacking with his friends early on, and they make bets about what places they can hack, not realizing that the phone lines will eventually trip them up.

While an older teen, Julian gets his girlfriend (Laura Wheelwright) pregnant, and things become difficult when he can't tear himself away from his buddies and hacking.

Eventually, as we know, he hacks into military Desert Storm plans and realizes that the public isn't being told important things.

The film does not go into the big 2010 Wikileaks scandal when the organization released documents of "Iran war logs, gunsight footage of the Baghdad airstrike, and the Afghan war diary. Actually the film's focus seems to be more on Assange's life.

Alex Williams was very good as Assange, protective of his family, contemplative, and extremely bright. Rachel Griffiths, never one of my favorites, didn't have much to do in this. I watched nearly the whole film before I realized Assange's nemesis was Anthony LaPaglia. I feel he is one of the most underrated actors ever, able to inhabit a role and make it seem easy and natural.

One of the best things about the film was seeing the old computers, the dial-ups, the enormous cell phones, all the old technology.

Many of the reviews here were written before the recent doings of Wikileaks, and now we learn that Assange is somewhat selective in what he's decided to tell us about the candidates for President so that we don't get the real story. We also learned that certain emails he submitted were fraudulent. It's disappointing - he started out with some noble goals, and he was sincere. Now, I don't know.

Underground has great actors and an even better story line. This movie should be more popular than it is. I'm not sure how much of the movie is real because I'm not Julian Assange, but I can say you can tell they tried to make it as accurate as possible. Considering I grew up using computers in the late 80's and onward I can easily understand this movie. For someone that has only been around computers for the past 5-10 years might have complications trying to understand the movie. I haven't been able to get the complete story on how computers were adapted in other countries in the late 80's so that was interesting for me to see represented in the movie.

I feel the pieces left out in the movie are left out for a reason. This is a movie that was made to entertain and inform. We all know if you want the full story you must read the book or do research. You have to expect some parts left out in the film.

I like Underground because it is not biased. The movie gave me a story of a hacker and it let me formulate my own opinion of him. My opinion is that I cannot give this movie a bad review considering what is being played in theaters and popular today.

You cannot help noticing the people that actually watched the movie gave it rave reviews.

I can quote Marianno Gorgeski "He is our Che Guevara of the modern internet era." Couldn't say it better myself. Also like he said he is trying to do more for the world than Facebook and the like are trying to do. That is why he is seen as a threat.

The only summary that I came up with after watching this film is Julian Assange is seen as a genius because the world has become lazy and incompetent. If the people demanded the truth like they should I think we would all praise Julian for what he stands for.

How much 'fact' is involved with this story of Julian Assange early life I do not know. But the movie as itself stands as great entertainment, perfectly cast and with a fantastic script!

Alex Williams as the young Assange gives a powerhouse performance of a young man focused and driven by his wanting to expose 'the truth' and not cause damage in the process. And he achieves his goal even with the dial-up internet of the late 1980's and early 1990's.

The 'authorities' are full of disdain and envy for this group of geniuses and their knowledge of up and coming technology. Assange laid the groundwork for the digital oversight 'the press' has failed to utilize in their mission as the fourth estate to keep an eye on corruption in the state and corporations.

This movie shows that Assange is a 21st century hero!