Sometimes timing is everything - so while this seems an apt time to watch a documentary about Assange (with him being arrested and all),the movie itself suffers from that. Now I hear you saying, they are not at fault, which is true. You should not "punish" the filmmakers for this weird twist of events.
But you cannot let this just slide and not even mention it. Also it is tough to get a grasp of the whole situation. The documentary struggles with Assange and him not being something the viewer can really understand. Which is evident when you realize that even Assange isn't "happy" with the outcome. Now that alone would be a badge of honor for other documentaries, but it would have been nice to know more, to get more feedback from Assange himself. Towards the end there is almost something there in an interview ... but the viewer is left again to think it through and make up their own mind. Not a bad documentary by a long shot and some will love this more than others, but there is so much more here and we only scratched the surface - kudos to an amazing beginning by the way, which sucks you all the way in - unfortunately this doesn't hold up for the whole thing
Risk
2016
Action / Documentary
Risk
2016
Action / Documentary
Plot summary
Filmed over six years, Risk (2016) is a character study that collides with a high stakes election year and its controversial aftermath. Cornered in a tiny building for half a decade, Julian Assange is undeterred even as the legal jeopardy he faces threatens to undermine the organization he leads and fracture the movement he inspired. Capturing this story, director Laura Poitras finds herself caught between the motives and contradictions of Assange and his inner circle.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
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Top cast
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Makes you feel like you're there
Like him or loathe him, RISK is an engaging little documentary following the tribulations of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange during the most tumultuous moments of his life. The film provides a first-hand account of what it's like to be caught up in an international hacking scandal with far-reaching consequences for those involved. Anyone interested in the modern world and in particular politics, security, and the Internet can't fail to be entranced by this material, and I think the most interesting part of it is that Assange himself isn't a sympathetic figure at all, although the documentary is very good.
Ballad of a Vain Man
The ability of whistle-blowers to leak sensitive, and even secret, information is an essential check on the potential abuse of power by government. But Julain Assange, founder of Wikileaks, a website established to assist such whistle-blowers, is a deeply problematic figure: an egoist who falls out with his own collaborators with amazing frequency; a man who seemed hardly to take accusations of rape seriously; an instinctive anarchist who sometimes seems to be fighting not government tyranny everywhere, but exclusively in America. This documentary was conceived as a friendly venture (in fact, the film-maker quietly reveals she is not exactly a neutral party in the story),but the essential vanity of Assange is clearly on display. Ultimately, it's hard to avoid concluding that whatever good Wikileaks might have done has been fatally compromised by the man at its core.