Watch We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks For Free

Just what I expected

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

A fascinating documentary that sheds a revealing light on the largest whistleblowing scandal of recent times, its repercussions and the moral dilemma involved, even though Gibney also has a bit of trouble editing all this material together in a cohesive way. Watch it. Best WikiLeaks doc out there.

If this film tells us anything its that the mainstream media like their corporate paymasters are very much in bed with the governmental organizations who Julian Assange and others looks to expose. From its title its clear that this is film offers little in the way of objective journalism and instead tows the mainstream media line that Assange is not a whistle blower but in fact an irresponsible thief. There is some interesting facts included in the documentary but its inability to remain objective for me at least undermined its credibility and its value as a serious work. Of course without Assange and people like Bradley Manning the worst excesses of government and corporate society would never come to light. A message this film conspicuously overlooks.

I am not shocked by the amount of really dismal reviews this film has gotten from users on IMDb considering the passionate following the Assange has maintained. But people don't give Alex Gibney enough credit. I think the director has built a reputation as a fair, objective critic of power, and his filmography ('Taxi to the Dark Side, Smartest Guys in the Room') has shown that. I believe Julian Assange built a personality cult around him, and many of his followers are either unwilling or unable to see the complexities of this saga, and would rather blindly follow this man into the abyss. What a strange and modern tragedy. The tragedy and irony of the story really is how such a great and noble idea as Wikileaks was corrupted by the same forces it railed against, and how the need for secrecy prevails. Excellent and compelling documentary.

I rate this documentary seven because of its watchability, although I realised while watching it that my mind was being warped against Assange. The title alone is a giveaway. Hackers have been very unfortunate, particularly since they caused the personal computer and the internet to be invented through their hacking work on telephones in the 1970s. It was William F. Gates who first threatened a hacker with the law, and that individual was later locked up with a lengthy sentence, starting the whole ugly corporate/state process that continues to this day with the victimisation of Assange. The documentary makes it plain that if Assange was to be locked up for publishing the war and state documents, so should the editors of the New York Times and The Guardian. It also showed the NYT journalists joining in the badmouthing of Assange, according to the CIA script. Then the film went on to condemn Assange for taking refuge with the one country that offered to help out: who could blame him? Yes, its a mixed up film that tries to show up Assange as a power freak, although he is of course a pathetic victim of the giant power that he took on. I, for one, truly hope he gets elected to the Australian Senate.