Underground: L'histoire de Julian Assange

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!

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.

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.

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.