sleggin

The Fifth Estate is actually a much better film than it's abysmal performance at the box office suggests. Possibly it will find it's audience in DVD release. It's worth the time and money for Cumberbatch's performance alone and a sad fact that it's sudden-death at the box office will preclude anyone from giving that performance serious Oscar consideration.

The problems with this picture are the lack of any real thruline in the narrative, an incredibly confusing first ten minutes, an assumption by the writer and director that the audience would come armed with foreknowledge of the subject and events.

Yet, it would be a mistake to miss seeing this picture when it does come out for home viewing. Once we get past the sad start, the character is compelling, the performances excellent and the events of great significance.

This is the most beautifully produced and brilliantly acted student film I ever saw. It is also, despite the high-quality talent, a mess and muddle of a film. The villains are hackneyed stereotypes, the dialogue cliché-ridden and the character actions incomprehensible. The directing is so poor that at the pivotal moment of the film, the action we need to see is out of frame.

Loyal Cumberbatch fans will surely praise it to the heavens and his extraordinary talent is on display, but it's simply not much of a story and poorly told, at that, with the very serious issue it touches on at the end handled in an offensively shallow manner.