Official Site

Director: Oliver Stone

Writers: Kieran Fitzgerald (screenplay), Oliver Stone (screenplay)

Runtime: 2h 14 min

Main Cast:

• Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Edward Snowden
• Melissa Leo as Laura Poitras
• Zachary Quinto as Glenn Greenwald
• Rhys Ifans as Corbin O'Brian
• Shailene Woodley as Lindsay Mills
• Nicholas Cage as Hank Forrester

Review: by Superior Spider-Sam

I am one who is overall indifferent towards the man that is Eric Snowden. Do I think he’s a national hero? No- not even a little bit mostly due the way he handled the fallout of his decision; however, I also am cognizant enough to realize he did what he believed was right in exposing a perceived injustice to the people who had their rights infringed upon. Therefore, I was not at all excited for a film to serve as a piece of propaganda to sway my feelings one way or another. Thankfully, for the most part, that is not what I got out of “Snowden.”

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What I Liked:

JGL-Immediately Joseph Gordon-Levitt becomes the best part of this movie. While it is well acted all around he sets the tone for what is to come from the very first line. You notice as soon as he opens his mouth that he’s actually changed his voice for the role.

What exactly he sounds like phonetically is hard to describe but trust me if you look up a video of the real life Eric Snowden and that is the voice you will hear from Levitt in the film.  Levitt puts on a, dare I say, Oscar-worthy performance as the NSA contractor turned whistle blower as we navigate his life from 2004 when he is a devout patriot to 2013 when he ultimately sees a flaw in his country that he feels he must expose.

The greatest part of Levitt’s performance is all of the nuance he puts into the character. From the way his face lights up with excitement when seeing old WWII tech, to the slight grin that comes across his face when he aces a CIA test in record time, to the way his eyebrows slightly elevate when hearing how corrupt some of his co-workers viewpoints are- all of this serves to give us a deeper understanding of the character in addition to the dialogue, and it is done very well.

The direction/ plot pacing– The direction is a bit of a double-edged sword (more on that in what I didn’t like). Oliver Stone, for his part, directed his acting crew to a very well put together performance. JGL was the real star and everyone else was just solid- as in, there were no bad performances but nothing stellar. As far as dramatizing the life of a relatively uninteresting man, Stone also does a good job. Again, Levitt as Snowden was shown as a devout patriot who wouldn’t go as far as to sign a petition that questioned the morality of the war to a man that became truly disgusted with what he had seen and learned about his country’s surveillance on its own citizens; and, the transformation was organic. There was no severe tonal shift that would have disrupted the pacing.

The last thing I want to mention about Stone’s campaign is that it would have been easy to make this film completely portray his viewpoint on the topic; because he did not, for the most part, I feel I should commend him. He mainly stuck to faithfully re-telling the story of the once most wanted man in America in an enjoyable dramatization.

What I Didn’t Like:

The direction- Above I mentioned the directing was a double-edged sword because there are pieces I believed were great and others not so great. Firstly, when not focusing on the illegal surveillance of domestic and foreign citizens, the focal point of the film was about Snowden and his girlfriend Lindsay (portrayed by Shailene Woodley). I mentioned Levitt was awesome and Woodley is no slouch either- the problem is that this relationship isn’t very compelling. That is not to say it is badly written or there was no chemistry, but it seems as if this part of the story was just there to be there; it could have been the love story in a number of different films and didn’t seem to add to the main narrative.

This brings me to my next gripe. That is, more time could (and probably should) have been spent showing just how serious the NSA surveillance was and in turn show why Snowden was so wanted for blowing the whistle on it. We did not get that. Levitt showed appropriate outrage and disbelief upon learning of how far the surveillance went- we even got a cringe worthy scene involving turning on a laptop and spying on a woman through the webcam. However, as far as the spying on our searches; the monitoring of major sites such as Google, Yahoo, Skype, and Facebook; and the forcing of Verizon to hand over phone data- that all was kind of glossed over and momentarily said in passing. I feel showing the sheer magnitude of how scary it all was would have added where the relationship aspect was lacking. Additionally, the “hunt” for Snowden was done as a montage close to the end of the film, which, again, I feel would have served the film better if, fleshed out.

My final issue with the film is the cameo of the actual Edward Snowden. I stated that director Oliver Stone did not make this film a piece of propaganda –mostly- nor did he put his own viewpoint in it- mostly. However, there is a singular piece that may as well scream to the audience “THIS MAN IS A HERO.”  It is a very brief moment and it doesn’t spoil the film; but. It clearly is an attempt to pull at our heart strings and try to reinforce or change our perception of the man.

Images Courtesy of IMDB