I was looking forward to "We Steal Secrets- The Story of WikiLeaks". I followed the WikiLeaks story in 2010 and I had seen the Enron movie and Taxi to the Dark Side.
This was a huge disappointment. Director Alex Gibney recycles stock footage and gives too much airtime to the man that turned Manning in and Assange's personal detractors. But the film distracts from the imbalance by bamboozling the audience with sophisticated computer generated animation and a good soundtrack.
The most ironic part is that wikileaks published the transcript of the film one day before it opened, with lengthy sourced annotations. Gibney gets a lot factually wrong (the embarrassing errors to do with Guardian Nick Davies 'harm minimization' example is hilarious as is the 'dinner for free speech'), and for the remainder he just misses the point. It's no wonder die hard Assange fans are up in arms about this, but even for the rest of us who have followed this story, Gibney does not do it justice. Worst of all, Bradley Manning's portrayal is dis-empowering.
The film lost the plot.
This was a huge disappointment. Director Alex Gibney recycles stock footage and gives too much airtime to the man that turned Manning in and Assange's personal detractors. But the film distracts from the imbalance by bamboozling the audience with sophisticated computer generated animation and a good soundtrack.
The most ironic part is that wikileaks published the transcript of the film one day before it opened, with lengthy sourced annotations. Gibney gets a lot factually wrong (the embarrassing errors to do with Guardian Nick Davies 'harm minimization' example is hilarious as is the 'dinner for free speech'), and for the remainder he just misses the point. It's no wonder die hard Assange fans are up in arms about this, but even for the rest of us who have followed this story, Gibney does not do it justice. Worst of all, Bradley Manning's portrayal is dis-empowering.
The film lost the plot.