Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

In what can only be accurately described as a political hit piece disguised as a documentary, we are asked by the director, Alex Gibney, to stop looking at the broader effects of the accomplishments of Wikileaks organization and its founder Julian Assange and focus on the minute and the irrelevant, the speculative and the unsubstantiated.The expected (not-so) subtle audio visual tricks employed by such shysters of Gibney's caliber could have been overlooked if it not were the mere fact that this so-called documentary, while asking us to change our mind, does so without providing a shred of concrete evidence supporting its implicit or explicit claims. It has going for it snippets of opinions from disgruntled former employees who are ironically too happy to play the role of the conscientious objector while harping on about noble cause corruption, with a straight face to my amusement; establishment journalists that are trying to distance themselves from Wikileaks now that a (half) black democrat has been elected president for two terms and the memories of the Bush years seems so far to imagine maybe U.S. imperialist interests are no longer the driving force behind the foreign policy of the nation.After all, we, the westerners are always the good guys, we're just misguided and we make mistakes but ultimately our hearts are always in the right place even though we may end up causing more death and destruction than the rest of the world combined. It's only reasonable that such morally upright people will be concerned with the "blood on the hands" of the founder of Wikileaks, dare I say, hypocritically more than the blood on the hands of the people they support with their tax dollars, they vote into office and they make excuses for. It asks rhetorical questions in futile hopes of appearing as objective which are only to be followed soon by the answers given to us in neatly packaged snippets from critics of Assange and Wikileaks.All of this effort, to cast a shadow of doubt as to the intentions of the founder of Wikileaks, Assange, hoping guilt by association will work its way through to discredit the organization and taint the information they have provided the public. The trick to planting the seed of doubt is isolation: through feeding the fragile egos of the individuals comprising western peoples and convincing them to believe in the lie that they are only concerned with the well-being of the people possibly effected by the leaks and ethics of how Wikileaks conducts their business. It's as ludicrous and transparent as it would be if some oil corporation executive accused the young protesters of harming the environment by chaining themselves to the trees that they intend to cut for the planned pipeline.It's also most generous in giving you the gracious way to exit the "insert political group to be presented as a cult". All you have to do in return for this gracious gesture is to give these people the benefit of the doubt every time they make a speculative and unsubstantiated claim with regards to the motives and actions of that group. You see, they understand that you're a good guy, just like them but only misguided by hateful anti-American, anti-freedom rhetoric of the "radical left". You too can be a respected member of the "good guy public" by doing so and you will also have the clear conscience of mind believing you were only motivated by your moral compass.Pathetic, predictably so but pathetic none the less.

In this documentary about the trials and tribulations of Julian Assange and Bradley Manning (the latter now a woman): everything about Manning is concise and brilliantly put together, with his text coming through in his conversations and confessionals (mostly to the hacker who ratted him out), and the actual story of Assange with the escalation of Wikileaks and all those many documents and videos is fascinating to watch, raising good questions about the nature of information and classified info in the digital age (and despite everything Assange has no charges against him from the US).If I have a criticism there was just a bit too much information on the sex case - not so much the press reaction, which by Assanges one doing in part, ended up connecting to Wikileaks as a struggle itself - mostly with a supposedly incognito interview with one of the accusers in the case (which I didn't think was just shot very well whether to preserve her identity or not). It's needed there as some part of the story, but it felt too padded out in that section when really the main focus and what Gibney as a storyteller gets the best material is how these two men communicated.That's where thematically you see this story still playing out with much harsher terms with Snowden, a kind of logical extension of the likes of Manning and Assange, who had their own problems relating to the world and used the many-tentacled beast known as the world wide web to reach out to people for various reasons ("hey, all info should be out there" to "I... care?") It's very good stuff that I wish was a masterpiece, but if you want to know about this whole story and never knew exactly all the key details, look no further.

I was really interested to see this film for a while now. Finally I got excited and down to it today and, unfortunately, I was in for a major surprise.I am trying to remember when was the last time I've seen such a technical feat of twisting things to their bare credible minimum. Spoiler alert! The bias is so forced that portraying Assange as a self centered paranoid needs being followed by his dancing, his stupidest off the record remarks to ever hit a camera, and of course Lamo crying a full minute for having to send Manning to prison. On the other hand of course, because of Lamo betraying his trust, Manning faced a life - to death sentence (year one being in solitary confinement tortured and sleep deprived by the government for daring to finally expose their crimes). And one more for Lamo. He "leaked" this person to the authorities (knowing Mannings' life would get in danger), so that Mannings' leaks might not put people's lives in danger. Morals. A numbers game. Imagine my surprise, actually (and still) liking Lamo for what he stands for.So basically, (spoiler alert): Assange - selfish weirdo, Lamo - tough moral call, Manning - gender crisis person on the edge, Wikileaks - OK, (but don't leak names, because murderers and traitors could face risks). Oh well, I can almost see that logic, beyond the piles of thousands of annoying dead bodies of murdered people and hundreds of rich pockets. Anyway. Thank you Alex Gibney for this one. Just remember, we do make the world what it really is.

The object of a good documentary film-maker should be to change your perception of something. This has been instrumental in many of the most celebrated documentaries ever made from Errol Morris' The Thin Blue Line to Michael Moore's classic Roger & Me. We Steal Secrets is no different. Alex Gibney sets out to make one of the most ambitious documentaries made in a long time with such a broad spectrum of players that you might think it would be too much. But with Bradley Manning in solitary confinement and Julian Assange's 1-million demand, you'd be wrong. Still without these two key players appearing to interview in this film, recreations and stock footage provide more than enough background to form a complete and fascinating picture of the story.The documentary provides us with a number of interesting angles. A central point being how personality deeply affects ones actions in the face of national security. With fascinating characters such as Lamo, Manning and of course Assange. Gibney cleverly suggests Assange might be more devious than originally thought as Assange suggests political motives where there are none in order to take away from his personal guilt. Using the sex-scandal to promote the idea of a witch-hunt which might not be rooted in reality after all.The documentary regardless of your stance should prove to be fascinating and illuminating as it sheds light on the personalities and inner workings of the Wikileaks organization, the biggest whistleblowing organization of the 21st century. What Alex Gibney sets out to do with this film he not only succeeds but he has made one of the most entertaining and exciting documentaries in a long time.Julian Assange and other have tried to to discredit the documentary as fabricating facts. However Julian Assange bashed the film before seeing it based on the title. For an interesting read you can check out the annotated script from both Wikileaks and the filmmakers.