Review: Snowden

The story of former CIA/NSA analyst Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who tells his story to some journos (played by Zachary Quinto, Melissa Leo, and Tom Wilkinson) and flashes back to important moments in his life between 2004-2013. We see his military training with the Marines, his recruitment by CIA boss Corbin O’Brian (Rhys Ifans), his relationship with girlfriend Lindsay (Shailene Woodley), and his growing discomfort with the surveillance tactics used by the CIA and NSA that he feels compelled to leak to the public at large. Timothy Olyphant and Nic Cage play a CIA agent and one of Snowden’s mentors in the agency, respectively.

If you genuinely are invested in the issues at hand or if are in the tank for Edward Snowden as director Oliver Stone (“Platoon”, “JFK”) and his co-writer Kieran Fitzgerald (who previously scripted Tommy Lee Jones’ “The Homesman”)  appear to be, you may be utterly fascinated and impressed by this 2016 biopic. I’m not and was not. Playing at times like a re-enactment of the similarly tedious doco “Citizenfour”, I found this a mostly yawn-worthy re-tread of stuff I already knew and didn’t really care about. I get why Stone is a Snowden guy (both are essentially lefties, but rather critical/suspicious of all ‘big government’), but I don’t get why he thought Snowden or Snowden’s actual story were interesting enough for a feature film, especially when the story has mostly already been told. Like his surprising nerf gun approach towards George W. Bush in the flat biopic “W.”, Stone’s film is astonishingly uninvolving from a filmmaker who used to be, polarising or not, certainly a more interesting filmmaker than this. It’s shockingly dull, at least to me despite having some vintage Stone themes at play.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt gives a pretty convincing (if schticky) vocal impersonation of the former CIA/NSA computer analyst turned whistle-blower. However, he doesn’t look remotely like Snowden (I don’t think they even got the hairstyle quite right nor the hair colour- it’s too dark!) and isn’t able to make the character terribly compelling. At best he’s good at playing a guy who isn’t easy to get a read on. There’s just not a lot there to latch onto character-wise, at least not a lot that is terribly sympathetic or interesting. That doesn’t make for much in the way of audience investment, I’m afraid. I find Snowden a boring narcissist to begin with (though like Julian Assange my disapproval of his actions is mild and bordering on complete disinterest), but the film simply paints him as boring, minus the narcissism. Remember the scene from “Citizenfour” with Snowden preening and styling his hair in the mirror for what seemed like an eternity? We don’t get that here, presumably because the film wants us to side entirely with Snowden and that scene makes him look like a bit of a dickhead. Although Zachary Quinto makes for an immediately credible Glenn Greenwald (He looks enough like him to be acceptable), early on you get the feeling that this is simply a fictionalised re-enactment of “Citizenfour”.

One early positive sign comes from an unlikely source: Nicolas Cage, who for once has decided to genuinely act instead of either wildly overacting or underplaying his way into a coma. He’s actually good here, and sadly mostly abandoned in the second half of the film. Timothy Olyphant and Melissa Leo are similarly wasted, presumably just wanting to be in an Oliver Stone film. The best performance by far comes from a rather creepy Rhys Ifans (an underrated actor), even if his character is overdone a tad by the oh-so subtle Mr. Stone. He may as well have been shot in shadowy menace from below like an apostle of Satan. As for Shailene Woodley, she yet again proves she doesn’t have the presence for cinema acting. Her performance is typically mediocre, and frankly she’s not very well cast as Snowden’s partner in life, a pole dancing instructor. She still looks and sounds like a weepy high school girl.

Aside from not actually being suitably cinematic material, the crux of my problem with the story of Snowden (and pretty much every other real-life story on the issue of government spying on citizens in recent years) is explained in a scene with Snowden and his girlfriend where she says she has nothing to hide so she doesn’t care that she’s potentially being spied on by the government. We are meant to agree with Snowden’s position that it’s a cop-out answer. The problem? I actually don’t agree with Snowden. At all. Many of you will vehemently disagree with me on that and call me naïve, but it’s honestly the way I feel. Meanwhile, Stone makes the dreadful decision to end the film on the real Snowden essentially acting…badly as himself. For a guy who always claimed he didn’t want to be the story, he sure seems to enjoy being an actor here. This guy’s ego seemingly knows no bounds, and it also serves to make Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s performance seem less convincing, especially in terms of his looks.

Slightly less tedious than “Citizenfour”, this is still “Citizenfour” re-enacted and showing us Shailene Woodley’s tits. A pretty large cast is mostly wasted in this surprisingly unenlightening effort. Joseph Gordon-Levitt tries hard but his primary achievement as Snowden is a more than decent vocal impersonation. I know I’m supposed to care about this subject, but I don’t and certainly not as presented here by Stone, who is far more impressed with Mr. Snowden than I am, it would appear. Sleep-inducing for the most part, but your mileage may be wildly different depending on your feelings towards the subject at hand.

Rating: D+