People are voting emotionally.

Excellent but underrated film

A Major Disappointment

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

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.

While my political perspective is much different from Laura Poitras, the director, I was able to appreciate "Citizenfour" and could see why it received such acclaim.Not so with this one. Just a sloppy, haphazard effort. Supposedly this was filmed over a 6 year period, but it would have been nice if there were some markers along the way telling us which year that which things were happening. If it's difficult to judge the years now, imagine 10- 20 years from now, when this is less of a "hot topic" issue.Although Poitras is clearly on the side of what Wikileaks does, she still makes Assange come off as a real sexist jerk. And his #1 assistant, Sarah Harrison, comes off as a Stepford Wife that has apparently drunk gallons and gallons of Kool-Aid. Obviously, it is hard to ignore the politics of a film like this when reviewing it. If you agree with the politics, you'll probably be more supportive of this film. If you don't agree with what Wikileaks is doing, you'll view Assange and company as smug, self-important hypocrites. After I saw the film, I was reading up about how this film was re-cut after being shown at Cannes, where Poitras had a change of heart on how she had previously shown Assange, and decided to now show his more sexist side. Similar to the change in perspective of Jacob Applebaum, whom Poitras was apparently sleeping with during a portion of this six year period, and then he was later accused of sexual misconduct. A film about all of that would probably have been a more interesting story than what we saw in the film.

Documentary Filmmaker Laura Poitras ("Citizenfour" (2014) follows up that Oscar Winner with this "Julian Assange", "Wikileaks" Exploration and it is a Mess. Suffering from a Number of Outside Influences the Film became even More Messy after its Initial Release. It was pulled and Re-Edited and Re-Released.The Movie is Confusing, Scattered, Lacks Focus and can cause Headaches trying to Follow the Themes or the Intent. It Plays like a Crazy Women's Quilt. Even more so if You are Unfamiliar with the Players or the Subjects Presented in a Haze of Haphazard History. Keeping Things Straight as the Film Unfolds is a Daunting Task.It Hops and Flops all over the place. Locations and Points of Interest Covered are so Random it Feels like a Treasure Hunt and the "X" is Never Found. It moves here and there and Never Settles. Nothing is very Clear. Ambiguity Reigns, and those Seeking Insight or Truth about any of this will be Disappointed.The Soap Opera Elements Overtake the Political and the Historical and it almost Devolves into a "People Magazine" Kind of Thing. Surely the Intentions were anything but. But in the End that's what it Feels Like. The Movie got Spoiled somewhere, sometime along the way and the Restoration to Something Palatable was Unsuccessful.

"We don't have a problem, you have a problem." Julian Assange As the ever-cool Assange announces to Hillary's campaign that leaks are forthcoming, he is slightly wrong: No one in the WikiLeaks world, on either side, is without problems. For Assange, four years of asylum-imprisonment in the London Ecuador embassy could not be easy; for Hillary, leaked messages and her private use of a server are only the beginnings of her problems.It's all about info and who commands it—Laura Poitras's doc, Risk, lets us in to the private world of the Australian journalist and programmer Assange, founder of WikiLeaks in 2006, enabler of Robert Snowden, and purveyor of thousands of pages of secret government documents.Poitras does a remarkable job keeping above the political sides, even admitting at one point that she does not trust Assange. She makes her presence known from voice over, yet rarely pushes an agenda other than entertaining and enlightening her audience.Poitras gives the audience as much insight as they could hope for with a subject as opaque as might be expected: "What does it matter how I feel?" (Assange) Brief moments with Lady Gaga and Daniel Ellsberg provide humorous respite from the monotony of Assange's imprisonment.Assange's answer as to why he does WikiLeaks is as evasive as his answers to most questions. Deflecting accusations of sexual harassment is pure Assange: He gently accuses hardcore feminists of a conspiracy against him. Sweden still wants to interview him about the charges.Whereas in Citizenfour, Poitras let Snowden come off as a hero, she does not cut the low-key Risk in a way to make Assange saintly: "The risk of inaction is extremely high," he says in a reflection of his activist mentality and the title of the film.He is smooth and careful, partly right and partly wrong, just like this documentary.