Eugene Jarecki’s “The Six Billion Dollar Man” plunges into the digital rabbit hole that is Julian Assange and his creation, WikiLeaks. This is not a hagiography, nor is it a simple condemnation; rather, it’s a sprawling chronicle of a man who became a symbol, a cypher, and eventually, a highly sought-after commodity in the global chess game of information control.
The film attempts to untangle the myriad threads of Assange’s story – the meteoric rise, the shadowy machinations of state power, and the fundamental, almost quaint, questions about what a society has a right to know.
It’s a narrative thick with the metallic taste of modern espionage and the disquieting hum of servers holding inconvenient facts. Jarecki, with a documentarian’s zeal, charts this complex territory, aiming for a definitive statement on an era where secrets became weapons and transparency, a battleground.
From Digital Upstart to Global Agitator
WikiLeaks, born in 2006, wasn’t just another website; it was an idealistic, perhaps dangerously naive, disruption engine. It promised a new era of ‘information environmentalism,’ where the pollutants of government secrecy could be filtered out by the disinfecting sunlight of public exposure.
This was the internet’s utopian youth, a brief, shining moment before the walled gardens and the data-harvesting behemoths took over. The release of the “Collateral Murder” video – a grim, unblinking look at US military action in Iraq – catapulted WikiLeaks, and by extension Assange, from niche concern to international headline.
The grainy footage, showing lives extinguished with a chilling detachment, became an instant Rorschach test for one’s views on power and accountability. WikiLeaks operated on a simple, potent premise: give whistleblowers an anonymous conduit, and the truth (or at least, very sensitive data) will out, often in terrifying volumes.
Assange, the enigmatic frontman, became either St. George slaying the dragon of state opacity or a reckless data dumper, depending on your cable news affiliation. His early partnerships with august journalistic institutions for the controlled release of diplomatic cables marked a high-water mark, a fleeting moment of establishment-disruptor synergy.
The Walls Close In: A London Limbo and a Hefty Price Tag
Then came the pivot. The hunter became the hunted. As WikiLeaks’ disclosures bit deeper, the gears of state power, particularly in the United States, began to grind with ominous intent. The film presents the Swedish sexual assault allegations not as a straightforward legal matter, but as a convenient lever, a potential pathway to American jurisdiction and the Espionage Act. (A classic case of ‘any port in a storm’ for those seeking leverage, perhaps?)
This led to Assange’s dramatic flight into the Ecuadorian embassy in London, a self-imposed exile that stretched into seven years of what can only be described as high-stakes house arrest. Jarecki’s film utilizes the claustrophobic CCTV footage from within those walls, painting a portrait of a man shrinking in the fishbowl, his world reduced to a few rooms while the geopolitical storm raged outside.
The title itself, “The Six Billion Dollar Man,” refers to the almost comically villainous (if true) sum allegedly dangled by the Trump administration before the Ecuadorian government – a bounty, essentially, for Assange’s eviction.
The narrative also touches upon the sour notes of internal discord, the whispers of betrayal by associates like Siggi Thordarson, a youthful hacker whose story arc feels like a grim parody of a spy thriller. Eventually, the embassy door opened, leading not to freedom but to Belmarsh prison, the antechamber to a US plea deal in 2024 that closed one chapter of this convoluted saga.
Truth, Consequences, and the Flawed Messenger
Jarecki’s documentary is less interested in Assange’s saintliness (or lack thereof) than in the principles his case ignites. The film wades into the murky waters of press freedom in the 21st century: is publishing classified information an act of journalism, a civic duty, or a national security threat?
“The Six Billion Dollar Man” argues, quite persuasively, that governments often prefer to shoot the messenger – or at least, entangle him in an endless legal labyrinth – rather than confront the uncomfortable truths revealed.
The film features voices like Edward Snowden and Naomi Klein, who frame Assange’s plight within a larger struggle against unchecked state power and the erosion of transparency. It acknowledges Assange’s reported arrogance and difficult personality (no one is perfect, especially when trapped in an embassy for years), but posits these as secondary to the central drama: the state’s capacity to crush those who expose its secrets.
In an era of ‘alternative facts’ and curated realities, the film implicitly asks what happens when the very notion of verifiable truth becomes a casualty. One interviewee, with a sigh, notes our collective drift from the idea that facts matter, a chilling epitaph for an age.
The Architecture of Information Warfare
Jarecki employs a fairly conventional documentarian toolkit: a mosaic of archival footage, newsreels that now seem like ancient history, and a chorus of talking heads – lawyers like the steadfast Jennifer Robinson and Stella Assange (whose personal involvement adds another layer of human drama), journalists, and former insiders.
The CCTV footage from the embassy is perhaps the most potent stylistic choice, transforming a diplomatic space into a Panopticon, a symbol of pervasive surveillance. The film’s structure is largely linear, a necessary approach to marshal the sprawling, decade-plus timeline into a coherent narrative. It presents its arguments methodically, building a case for the significance of WikiLeaks’ interventions and the severity of the reaction.
“The Six Billion Dollar Man” doesn’t necessarily seek to make you like Julian Assange. Instead, it prompts a disquieting consideration of the mechanisms of power, the fragility of information freedom, and the often-ruinous cost paid by those who dare to lift the veil. It leaves one pondering the uncomfortable reality of our hyper-connected, yet increasingly opaque, world.
The Six Billion Dollar Man premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in the Special Screenings section.
Full Credits
Director: Eugene Jarecki
Writer: Eugene Jarecki
Producer: Kathleen Fournier
Cast: Julian Assange, Pamela Anderson, Edward Snowden, Naomi Klein, Daniel Ellsberg, Stella Assange, President Rafael Correa
Cinematographers: David McDowall, Jack Harrison, Derek Hallquist, Juan Passarelli, Joe Fletcher
Editors: David Fairhead, Martin Reimers
Composers: Akin Sevgör, Niklas Paschburg, Robert Miller, Luis Flores, Harold Charon Cisneros
The Review
The Six Billion Dollar Man
"The Six Billion Dollar Man" stands as a dense, diligent accounting of the Assange saga, more a meticulous ledger of events and ideas than a fiery polemic. It methodically charts the collision course between a new breed of information activism and entrenched state power, compelling viewers to grapple with uncomfortable questions about transparency in an age of pervasive surveillance. While its approach is largely traditional, its subject matter remains undeniably vital, making it a significant, if somber, contribution to understanding our contemporary information wars.
PROS
- Comprehensive and detailed exploration of a complex, multi-year saga.
- Effectively highlights crucial themes of press freedom, government secrecy, and the nature of truth.
- Utilizes compelling archival and CCTV footage to underscore Assange's isolation and the stakes involved.
- Provokes serious thought on the implications of information warfare.
CONS
- Adopts a somewhat conventional documentary style for an unconventional subject.
- Its density might feel exhaustive for viewers less familiar with the intricacies of the case.
- Focuses more on assembling known facts than offering startling new revelations.