Snowden

Certainly the 21st century has its drawbacks as did past centuries, and the biggest pitfall is that of the internet--and the problems with it that ensues. When "Snowden" came along, it was a film that had to be produced, especially with the backlash of what "The Fifth Estate" did for peaking audiences' attention of the problem of privacy vs. national security. You remember "The Fifth Estate", about the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbach) and his problems of being a whistle-blower.

This docudrama reveals the incredible untold personal story of controversial whistle-blower, Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Leavitt), the polarizing figure who exposed shocking illegal covert surveillance activities by the NSA and became one of the most wanted men in the world.
The story is presented as a series of flashbacks as Snowden has decided to tell his story to documentarian, Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo) with Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto) of the Guardian newspaper interviewing along with Ewen MacAskill (Tim Wilkinson) in Hong Kong in June, 2013. He tells them how he got started with the CIA in 2004 with Corbin O'Brian (Rhys Ifans) as his instructor and boss. And also when and how he meets his girlfriend, Lindsay Mills (Shailene Woodley), and the story then leads them up to present day with all the pitfalls--the snowball just gets larger and larger.

Others to round out the cast are Nicolas Cage as Hank Forrester, one of Snowden's instructors, Joely Richardson as Janine Gibson, Timothy Olyphant as CIA Agent Geneva, Scott Eastwood as Trevor James, Ben Schnetzer as Gabriel Sol, Lakeith Lee Stanfield as Patrick Haynes, Ben Chaplin as Robert Tibbo and Bhasker Patel as Marwan Al-Kirmani.

This was decisively directed by filmmaker veteran Oliver Stone ("Platoon" '86, "Wall Street" '87, "Born on the Fourth of July" '89, "JFK" '91, "Natural Born Killers" '94, "Nixon" '95, "Any Given Sunday" '99, "World Trade Center" '06, "W." '08, "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" '10, "Savages" '12) plus several others. One thing about Stone's direction is he does dig deep in drawing out the different nuances of the characters he's dealing with, whether they be based on fact or fiction. This was adequately written by Kieran Fitzgerald and Stone in that another thing also about Stone is his inability to be objective, whether this be purposed or not. Certainly Stone is being a whistle-blower in his own rights, so it's no wonder that he writes a good deal about different individuals who become whistle-blowers themselves. If he could give a bit more info about the other side in which he's writing, I believe it could make his screenplays that much more powerful. This script has Stone's handprint all over it, so Fitzgerald, being a virtual newbie compared to Stone, probably was there to soak up all of Stone's experience which Stone does have aplenty. There were a couple of small slow spots in this, but overall it does give you that one, two punch that has become Stone's trademark.

If you're into governmental cover ups or even conspiracy theories, this is a film that is tailor made for you. This certainly has information that doesn't surprise in some ways, but is revealing in other ways. One thing for sure, if we, as a society, want things to change for the better, we have to react majorly as a people before we can expect anything to change. It's really up to us. If this film is pointing to any message, I believe this is it.

Out of 4 Stars: 3                                       Rated: R                                       134mins.