SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Leofwine_draca 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.

SteveMierzejewski The reviews for this documentary are all over the place. Reviewers who are firm advocates of WikiLeaks tend to over-exaggerate the film's virtues, while those who find the organization's actions reprehensible tend to hate it. I watched the film as an objective reviewer.Some have called the film a sleeper and there are parts of the film that live up to that branding. These occur mainly at the beginning of the film when scenes shift quickly and conversations are somewhat baffling and vapid.Assange emerges as an emotionally remote character who hides his true personality behind his dedication to WikiLeaks. He even states that what he does is more important than who he is. The only scene in which we get a glimpse into his repressed character is when he is interviewed by Lady Gaga, dressed in her Wicked-Witch-of-the West costume. Ms. Gaga, like most celebrities, tries to hide her insecurity behind false bravado and seemingly unfiltered, carefree questions which tell us more about her than Assange. In a clear case of projection, she asks about his relationship to his parents, wherein Assange claimed his father was "abstract".We do get some glimpses into the life Assange lives within the Ecuadorean Embassy. We learn about his relationships with his team and find out a few ways that the organization keeps itself protected from government intrusion. This may hold some interest for some viewers.The latter half of the film is more interesting, especially when he talks about the DNC hacking. I only wish this were expanded more as it is more timely. It is at this point in the film that Assange talks about the earth as so interconnected that any action must be considered a global action. It is an interesting an important viewpoint that should be considered. It is not simply "think globally, act locally". It is more that even a small local action may have global implications.The film leaves many questions unanswered and, as a whole, doesn't flow very well. It could have been better made. There is nothing compelling in it, meaning that a viewer may be tempted to stop watching the film entirely at certain points. There is no hook that makes us want to see how it ends. There are no compelling relationships and some issues seem unresolved that could easily have been. Still, a few scenes are definitely worth seeing.For those interested in the world of cyber security, political intrigue, and government surveillance, this documentary may be of interest. For the general public, however, it may simply be too dull.

jdesando "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.

brandonarboleda-43872 I watched the newest cut of Risk as of 5/7/17 with the director in attendance.I went into Risk blind, as in, I had no prior knowledge of the film prior to seeing it. I was already a big fan personally Poitras' previous Oscar-winning documentary CITEZENFOUR, so I was expecting to get something similar in that sense, but what I got was something even more provocative. The viewer throughout the film is creating this image of Assange as more and more things come into light. At the same time, we get an in-depth look into the inner operations and daily struggle of one of the most famous/infamous, depending who you're asking, online warehouse of classified documents, WikiLeaks. This clash of truth, privacy, and freedom is experienced as the governments of the world begin question each others practices while also witnessing the personal struggle and persecution of the whistle-blowing community. All that, as told through the perspective of a documentary film-maker who puts so much at risk personally to capture the truth of everything that happens in this community that I personally have no extensive knowledge on. About Assange, the viewer is really left to observe this candid portrayal of the man behind the whole operation. A portrayal that even the subject doesn't agree with. That, along with the fact that we are living immediate consequences of the the events portrayed in the film, is what makes it so raw and so relevant to what we're living through right now.