‘Snowden’: Whistleblower bio anything but subtle
Published 1:30 am Friday, September 16, 2016
When I began writing this review of Oliver Stone’s new film about Edward Snowden, I decided to take a look at Snowden’s Twitter account, as research.
As I typed in Snowden’s name, my fingers hesitated. I had to wonder: Is someone paying attention to the fact that I’m looking up Snowden? Will there be consequences down the road for doing so?
That kind of thinking proves that Stone’s “Snowden” is effective enough. Whatever you think of Snowden — irresponsible traitor or heroic whistleblower — the movie does push all the paranoid buttons.
“Snowden” resembles the scene in Stone’s free-swinging “JFK” (1991) where Donald Sutherland’s Mr. X calmly peels back the surface of the Kennedy assassination and questions what’s really going on in the upper echelons of power. This new movie is full of that: men in expensive coats, speaking in veiled terms about who pulls the strings.
Stone is good at that kind of skullduggery, and “Snowden” needs spy-movie stuff. In part, this is because the hero of the movie is a fairly colorless nerd.
He is, of course, Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the former CIA employee who, while doing contract work for the National Security Agency in 2013, leaked thousands of classified documents to journalists.
The drama surrounding the leak — previously captured in the Oscar-winning documentary “Citizenfour” — provides the framing device for Snowden’s story. Snowden hides out in a Hong Kong hotel room, spilling his secrets to filmmaker Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo) and journalists Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto) and Ewan MacAskill (Tom Wilkinson).
We flash back to Snowden’s past. A brainiac high-school washout with a patriotic spirit, he enlists as a Special Forces candidate, but breaks his legs during training. The CIA is interested in his savant-like computer skills, first appreciated by a renegade programmer (Nicolas Cage) now put out to pasture.
As he rises through the system, Snowden’s straight-arrow nature is shocked by how the U.S. government spies on its own citizens. Meanwhile, his girlfriend (Shailene Woodley) is a liberal who questions his conservative views.
This is Snowden’s version of events, which some have disputed. Oliver Stone doesn’t worry too much about these different versions; for him, there are no gray areas, just vivid activism. As a piece of moviemaking, “Snowden” is energetic, if blunt.
For instance, the film’s main baddie is a CIA bigwig played by Rhys Ifans, who looks as though he wandered in from a vampire movie. Smoke sometimes clouds his image, in case we missed the satanic overtones.
Yes, Stone is still heavy-handed. But the movie’s full of visual ideas, like the way the hotel’s mirrored ceilings suggest how our identities might be endlessly replicated and exposed online.
Stone idolizes his heroes — from Kennedy to Ron Kovic to Jim Morrison — and Snowden is no exception. That weakens Stone as a thinker, but not as a dynamic filmmaker. Outlandish as it may be at times, “Snowden” is lively — its purpose is to make you think twice, and you will.
“Snowden” 3 stars
Oliver Stone is in energetic shape for this biopic of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). There are no gray areas for Stone, so don’t expect nuance; but the movie is dynamic, and taps into some serious paranoia. With Shailene Woodley, Rhys Ifans.
Rating: R, for language, subject matter
Showing: Alderwood, Cinebarre, Everett, Monroe, Marysville, Meridian, Pacific Place, Sundance Cinemas, Thornton Place, Woodinville, Cascade Mall
