A few weeks ago, The Fifth Estate came out in a wide release. Despite its big-name appeal and publicity, it didn't do nearly as well as expected in the box office, which puts the political thriller genre in a tight spot for the moment.

The Fifth Estate is an adaptation of a book written by Daniel Domscheit-Berg about his time with the organization known as WikiLeaks. He documents his time working alongside the Internet activist Julian Assange, whose site was responsible for leaking hundreds of thousands of military and diplomatic documents to the press in 2010, including a series of classified documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan obtained with the assistance of Bradley Manning. However, Julian Assange has criticized his former friend's book for its negative portrayal of him, calling it a "massive propaganda attack."

Domscheit-Berg's book was picked up for a film adaptation with the help of DreamWorks Pictures and Participant Media. Bill Condon was picked to direct, with the lead role of Assange going to British superstar Benedict Cumberbatch. Daniel Brühl was cast for the role of Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and other big names like Stanley Tucci and Laura Linney were cast for supporting roles.

However, in its first weekend, the film earned $1.7 million despite its modest budget and its high-profile lead actor. It's become one of the worst wide-release openings of the year.

Most critics, at least, were positive enough to praise the strong performance of Benedict Cumberbatch, who brought charisma to the role of Assange while also trying to keep him humanized. But beyond that, the biggest issues for both critics and moviegoers are the film's narrative style. Christy Lemire of RogerEbert.com says the filmmakers tried to cast Assange as a man "whose ambitions are tidily explained away through pop psychology." Louis Black at The Austin Chronicle adds that the film uses "flash and stylistic bravado" to set up the drama and tension about the origins of WikiLeaks, only to force the story to represent a tragedy for Assange and conclude on a flat note.

While this isn't good news for DreamWorks, it may be a bittersweet victory for the real life Julian Assange. With Cumberbatch's sterling performance and the film's poor rating, it gives him slightly more credibility while putting his critics in the awkward position of failing to make their case against as him as strongly as they'd like.

Image by Jorge Figueroa on Flickr