SNOWDEN – Review

Depending on your point-of-view, Edward Snowden is a hero or a traitor. When whistle-blower Snowden leaked documents to the public, through the Guardian newspaper, that exposed the United States government’s massive surveillance and data collection on own citizens, the news exploded around the world, sparked outrage among the American people (either that their government was spying on them or that Snowden revealed it), and sent Snowden on the run and into hiding.

Hero or villain, few would deny that what Edward Snowden did is a worthy subject for a serious film. It even sounds like the subject might be a good fit for director Oliver Stone, a filmmaker famous for his affinity for conspiracy theories and for his libertarian-to-liberal views. But anyone expecting a very liberal slant to this film will be surprised, as Stone takes an even-handed approach, offering some of the arguments on both sides. The problem with Stone’s SNOWDEN is not bias but that there are not enough of those discussions and they lack the needed depth. This is an important subject,one that strikes at the heart of what it means to be a free country, one that deserves a big discussion in a big serious drama. Stone’s SNOWDEN is not a bad film as much as a disappointing one.

It does offer a little insight into who Edward Snowden is and why is made this fateful choice. Stone starts his film with Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) meeting with journalists Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo), Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto) and Ewen MacAskill (Tom Wilkinson) as he discusses on camera what is in the documents he is giving them. The film then shifts back and forth between that event and the earlier points in Snowden’s life that led to his decision. Snowden was inspired by 9/11 to join the Army but his military career was cut short in training by a shattered leg. The serious, patriotic young man next applies to the CIA. The interviewer tells him his lack of a high school diploma ordinary would scratch him from consideration but these are not ordinary times post-9/11 and Snowden is a brilliant computer programmer with the remarkable skills needed for the modern battlefield in cyberspace. Training for the CIA further reveals Snowden computer gifts and brings him under the wing of Corbin O’Brian (Rhys Ifans). At the same time, the politically-conservative Snowden meets and later falls for liberal, creative Lindsay Mills (Shailene Woodley).

Snowden had previously been the subject of an excellent documentary CITIZENFOUR by Laura Poitras, one of the journalists Snowden contacted and who is played by Melissa Leo in Stone’s film. For some, that excellent documentary may seem enough. Still there is a segment of the film-going public who never see documentaries and the subject is big enough to warrant a dramatic narrative film speak to that other audience. It would not be the first time a subject or person has been covered in both. There were several documentaries about the sub-prime mortgage crisis and Wall Street crash that sparked the Great Recession before THE BIG SHORT told it so well in narrative form.

Stone’s film unfolds much like a political thriller, building tension as Snowden uncovers the kind of work the CIA and NSA are doing and his growing both ethical unease and personal paranoia. Restless after being assigned to desk work at a post in Switzerland, Snowden works his way into a field assignment, which puts him in contact with an NSA program secretly collecting unprecedented amounts of information on, well, everyone. NSA tech employee Gabriel (Ben Schnetzer) casually describes how the system works, and how it is all approved by the FISA court, which he calls a rubber stamp. The discovery of what seems to be an unconstitutional surveillance program leaves Snowden uneasy, and the way the field agent uses that information even more so. By the time Snowden is posted to Hawaii, now as a private contractor for the NSA, the forces the drive his decision are well underway.

The film is at its strongest when it shows us how this system of surveillance grew, slowly and organically, more like the frog in the beaker where the temperature is slowly rising than by a group of people abruptly just deciding to violate the law. Much of the film is presented in a straight-forward manner,  lacking the kind of cinematic flare of some of the director’s earlier films. Near the film’s end, the real Snowden appears, in a return to more of that signature style.

The disappointing part of Stone’s film is that while is does have some examination of the right or wrong of Snowden’s actions, bit on his inner motivations and how a basically conservative guy who join the CIA reached this decision, it does not have enough of that. Which way one sees it might depend on whether one sees the War on Terror as the same as WWII or the Civil War (when such Constitutionally questionable things happened) or whether it was more like the Cold War or the Vietnam War, a proxy war in the former. One thing those who remember the Cold War will likely found chilling about Snowden’s revelations was the oft-made statement that the difference between free countries like the U.S. and communist ones like the Soviet Union (Russia) was that our government didn’t spy on its people. Edward Snowden proved that point of pride was no longer the truth.

The film spends a quite a bit of time on Snowden’s romantic life, perhaps trying to build drama but also humanizing the central figure. Once the patriotic if naive Snowden, who is nicknamed “Snow White” by a more jaded fellow programmer, realizes what his government is actually doing, a level of paranoia sets in. Well, not paranoia, because they really are watching him and listening to his conversations, just as they are everyone else. The film sometimes suffers from an uneven pace, with parts of the story that could have been dealt with briskly sometimes dragged out, although other critical moments are handled with nicely-built tension.

SNOWDEN does boast a strong cast, and a few noteworthy performances. Joseph Gordon-Levitt does not much resemble Edward Snowden but he does a nice job portraying him, capturing mannerisms and some of the evolution in his thinking on his work. Nicholas Cage is surprisingly effective in a restrained performance as a CIA engineer now relegated to teaching, in a small but memorable part. Ifans is brilliantly as O’Brien, a smooth character shifting between warmth as someone who is fond of Snowden, and creepy as someone enamored of his protege’s remarkable skills but ethically blind to what kind of work they are doing. Disappointingly, Shailene Woodley is given too little to do as Snowden’s girlfriend.

SNOWDEN is a missed opportunity, a subject that might have been better in the hands of a different director, regardless of Stone’s considerable talent. The lack of focus on discussion around Snowden’s actions and their implications, right or wrong, or of people’s right to know in a democratic country, gets too little attention. The biggest problem the film faces is assumptions. It is likely audiences will decide to see Stone’s film or not based on how they feel about Edward Snowden himself, and less on the merits of Stone’s film itself. Those who see Snowden as a traitor may assume Stone will present a simple admiring view of him. Those who believe Snowden is a whistle-blowing hero may be disappointed the film does not have the in-depth discussion of CITIZENFOUR or more detail on the technology itself.

Rating: 3  1/2 out of 5 stars

SNOWDEN opens in theaters September 16.