The film's original premise was to address the life of Julian Assange, documenting scenes showing "motives and contradictions of Assange and his inner circle", focusing on the risks taken by persons involved in the well-known Wikileaks website, the most notable risk being taken by Assange himself. The documentary begins in 2010, addressing Assange's worldwide persecution by the United States, and the extreme judicial measures he came to face on the part of the Swedish judicial authorities, which sought his extradition from the U.K. in 2012. Assange alleges that any such Swedish extradition would have culminated in an eventual extradition to the United States. The opening scene shows Assange calling the U.S. State Department, asking them to step-up security procedures, so as to make clear that the document-loss was not an intentional act of damage to the United States by Wikileaks/Assange. This segues into a presentation of Assange's angst about the fate of Chelsea Manning and Assange's plans to avoid U.S. capture. The film then presents documentation of Assange's asylum claim, and the disguising of himself to sneak into the Embassy of Ecuador in London for refuge. Originally titled "Asylum", the film becomes a journey into the perception of Poitras, who, in the re-cut of the film, altered the film's focus on the experience of risk-taking media work, towards a critique of Assange as a flawed character under attack, including for his alleged mistreatment of women. In the 2016 version of the film, Poitras presents a more sympathetic position towards Assange, drawing parallels between her own U.S. persecution for filmmaking with Assange's persecution for publication of leaked official documents. The 2017 re-cut version focuses more on Assange's responses to accusations against him. One apparent trigger for the change of heart for Poitras appears to be her affair and subsequent disappointment with Assange friend and Wikileaks supporter Jacob Appelbaum. In mid-2016, directly after the Cannes screening, Appelbaum was publicly accused of abusing women while working with Wikileaks and serving as a computer security activist at Tor. The film crosses lines at one point from being a documentary to a cinéma vérité, when Poitras admits in a voice-over her personal disappointment with Appelbaum, and her anger at Appelbaum's alleged abuse of one of her friends. In interviews, Poitras claimed that it was Julian Assange's frantic attempts to reason with her about the pre-Cannes cut, citing that his lawyers contacted her directly before the Cannes. Poitras said that Assange sent her an SMS message calling these scenes a "threat to his freedom". According to Poitras, this was what led her to refocus on the same accusations, to add the Appelbaum story to the film, and to change the overall message of the film. The film touches briefly on the role played by Wikileaks in the 2016 U.S. election.
Review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes collected 94 reviews with an average rating of 7/10, of which 82% were positive. The website's critical consensus states: "Risk poses knotty questions regarding documentary filmmaking ethics, but remains consistently compelling despite its flaws." Metacritic gave the film a score of 72 out of 100 based on 25 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Some reviewers highlighted Poitras' personal entanglement in the story, for her affair with Appelbaum. The film drew only $145,000 in box office remittances, a sharp drop from the $3 million earned by Citizenfour, Poitras' documentary about Edward Snowden.
