Underground: The Julian Assange Story

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.

After watching this film, I can safely say I am fully on Julian's side. However, this film is in no way biased, it simply presents the facts. The acting is brilliant, and Alex Williams performance is quite amazing to watch, as he portrays the socially unsure character of Julian Assange. I for one was quite rejecting of Assange's pleas for mercy during the Wikileaks scandal of 2010, but now, I can safely say I am open to all sides of the story. If I had one complaint, it would be that this film does not allow any time to tell the story of the 2010 Wikileaks scandal, in fact, all we as the viewers get to witness is a short summary of what happened before the ending credits. However, all is forgiven, as this is an "origin story", and not a biographical film. The Soundtrack is excellent, and it's beautifully filmed. This tele-movie is a real gem, and deserves to be played in Australian cinemas, especially when some of the other rubbish seems to gain access to our screens. See this movie, and decide for yourself, you won't regret it!

Whenever a movie has some political agenda or seems to, the reviewer votes divide into haters and lovers, ten stars vs one star and so on. I am an admirer of Wikileaks, but I can't view this movie so singlesidedly. Instead, I have to compare it to similar movies like Operation Takedown or even Hackers. Also, I have to take into account that this is not a big budget American movie, but an Australian TV drama.

On that scale, Underground is surprisingly good. I wouldn't know how factual it is, but take into consideration that it is based on a book (that is freely available online) about the hacker culture, written when Julian Assange was a nobody. It has no connection to Wikileaks at all and none of the Assanges consulted on the movie (even though Julian himself said he liked it when he saw it).

The actors were well chosen, the boy looks like Assange a bit, and they all acted pretty well. There are two known names in the cast: Rachel Griffiths as the mother and Anthony LaPaglia as the cop chasing him. As for the story, it was eerily similar to Operation Takedown: the morally driven hacker that raises a middle finger to authority in his quest for truth. Unlike Mitnick, though, he only paid a 2100$ fine allegedly because the judge sympathised with his family's "nomadic lifestyle".

As for the main complaint, that the movie doesn't explain the motivations of Julian Assange, that is a good thing. Several pieces of the puzzle are presented: his obsessive personality, his cult leader step dad, his morally outspoken mother, his discovery of American misdoings in the first Gulf War. They all are just pieces. Many other exist and it is the role of the viewer to get or not interested in putting them together.

My conclusion is that for people not interested in the hacker culture or specifically Assange, the movie will seem pointless. For the others, though, it is a good watch. There is, of course, some dramatization, changes of perspective and so on, but in the end it does well what it set to do and that is why I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Smart movie, nicely reflecting the hypocrisy of modern society, and modern media. Tackles general ignorance, and wish of a talented young man to use his talents for something bigger than ordinary life. Without pathetic heroism and vanity, which might be expected, but rather suggests some different model of behavior to smart young people. Decently low grade fine suits to movie with non-orthogonal ideas.