Snowden (2016)

Written by Filipe Manuel Neto on March 24, 2023

It's a forgettable film, with nothing remarkable about it other than the fact that it makes an open defense of Edward Snowden and what he did.

Oliver Stone has given us a film that could not be more controversial: a biography of Edward Snowden, an ex-military and former US spy who worked as an intelligence analyst for the CIA and the NSA. It's not worth getting into the script, almost everyone knows who Snowden is and what he did. What varies a lot is how each person faces it. To many Americans, he is a traitor who has endangered world security and the fight against terrorism. For others, he denounced the way the US controls the world and uses information (and the way people practically abdicate their private life through social networks) in order to gain advantages in the field of macroeconomics and geostrategy.

Acting as a panegyric, the film is militant, takes sides and defends Snowden and his view of things, portraying him as someone of courage, a man of integrity who served his country and the fight against terrorism, but who found that he was part of the problem rather than the solution, and that he was serving much darker interests than he realized. Seeing the film is the same thing as listening to Snowden himself, who has been exiled in Moscow for several years (to what extent did Putin not take the opportunity to recruit him, or use everything he knew?). So it's a film that will upset those who see Snowden as a traitor to their country, and even some people who would prefer a more neutral approach, better able to show both sides of the problem, as I would have preferred.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt does a good job as the protagonist. While we're not sure if he managed to be faithful to the real Edward Snowden, the actor creates someone who is easy to like: one of those computer and math geniuses who observe people and the rest of the world with a mixture of curiosity and naivety. On the one hand, I feel inclined to sympathize with the character... on the other hand, the naive way in which he acts seems forced and hard to believe, particularly after what the character experiences in Japan. Shailene Woodley also does a good job by giving life to Snowden's girlfriend (now wife), an outgoing and communicative girl. The film features the collaboration of Melissa Leo, Tom Wilkinson, Zachary Quinto, Rhys Ifans and Nicolas Cage.

Technically, it has the characteristics of an ordinary mainstream American film. There are good sets and the cinematography has some well-done moments, in addition to some notes of good CGI. However, it's a relatively forgettable film, with nothing to make it stand out other than the fact that it's about Snowden.