Timing couldn't be better for Poitras doc on Assange

"Risk" is an infuriating film on many levels. A startlingly intimate portrait of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is guaranteed to stir up strong feelings among Assange supporters and skeptics alike.

The film also raises some disquieting questions about documentary filmmaking, as director Laura Poitras places herself in the middle of ethical issues that throw the enterprise into question.

"Risk" begins in 2010, when Assange is living in England, trying to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning regarding accusations of sexual assault.

As the movie opens, he and WikiLeaks section editor Sarah Harrison are working the phones, trying to warn the U.S. State Department about the impending release of unredacted diplomatic cables.

With a combination of naiveté and hubris that will become gratingly familiar, Assange and Harrison try to get then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the phone.

Assange at one point tells a low-level State Department employee that "I don't have a problem, you have a problem."

Like Poitras' earlier "Citizenfour," "Risk" unfolds in verite-style encounters, while Assange consults with his mostly female team of attorneys, holds spin meetings with the WikiLeaks staff, plots legal and publicity strategies and, at one point, has his hair cut while watching a K-pop video as his adoring minions look on with awed smiles.

These scenes offer chilling evidence of Poitras' change of heart regarding Assange, who might have started out as an admirable warrior for pure transparency but who evolves into a smug, self-righteous megalomaniac.

Even more sobering, though, is Poitras' disclosure late in the film that she committed a serious boundary violation during filming, an ill-advised relationship that casts serious doubt on her judgment and credibility.

Her admission is too little, too late, and raises far more questions than it answers, suggesting that Poitras is either unwilling or unable to contend with the contradictions she so elegantly invoked moments earlier.

Poitras, who presented a far more pro-Assange version of the film at Cannes last year, regularly regales viewers with the dreams she has about Assange, reaching its dramatic climax when Assange decides to release damaging DNC emails last July.

As he weighs which candidate is more deserving of being harmed, it's as if Charlie Chaplin's "Great Dictator" is dangling an inflatable globe on his knee.

On the one hand, he observes, Trump might have some unsavory business dealings. On the other, Clinton clearly "has got it in for me."

And here we are.

“Risk”

  ½

With: Julian Assange, Sarah Harrison, Daniel Ellsberg

Directed by: Laura Poitras

Other: A Neon release. At the Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago. Not rated. 87 minutes.