IN many ways the story of hacker-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden is tailor-made for director Oliver Stone’s sensibilities.
The Platoon and JFK director has in Snowden an unassuming and ultimately deeply polarising figure who railed against his government’s secretive actions, and by extension American imperialism as a whole, by leaking classified information that could ultimately breach national security. Is he a patriotic hero or a treacherous criminal?
Stone tells Snowden’s story across two distinct timelines. On the one hand you have him in 2013 in his Hong Kong hotel hideaway where he’s discussing how exactly to leak the information with The Guardian journalists Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto) and Ewen MacAskill (Tom Wilkinson), with filmmaker Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo) documenting what’s happening for what would become her Oscar-winning Citizenfour documentary.
Then we have the years leading up to that juncture, starting in 2003 when Snowden is just a US army grunt discharged after breaking his legs and set on a path to serve his country in other ways. “The modern battlefield is everywhere” he is repeatedly told by loquacious CIA instructor Corbin O’Brien (a scenery-chewing Rhys Ifans) who takes him under his wing in a way that earmarks tension for when Snowden decides to defy his country’s secrecy laws later on.
The film’s somewhat oversimplified characterisation of the titular man is overcome by Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s pleasingly understated, quietly captivating central performance. Apart from him being made to look remarkably like the man himself and putting on a noticeably deeper voice, the actor makes him feel real and injects the film with much-needed empathy.
Quite simply it would crumble under the weight of itself if it weren’t for such a talented actor taking on that eponymous role.
With this uneven but fairly engrossing and compelling biopic of recent history, Stone attempts to take a lot on; from jumping around timelines to the race-against-time leaking of the info to the attempt at humanising Snowden via his increasingly strained relationship with activist and artist girlfriend Lindsay Mills (Shaileene Woodley). Their meet-cute, for example, over political differences exemplifies some of the films tonally erratic tendencies.
It’s never wholly successful in blending everything together and often smooths out the rougher edges of the story in favour of both holding Snowden aloft as a courageous patriot and making it fit into that slick, widely accessible Hollywood biopic mould. But there’s undeniable drive to the film, an almost innocent sense of impassioned justice and an avid sincerity of belief in its central figurehead.
Stone is clearly on the justification-for-disclosure side of the fence but it also gives fair time to the argument that the government’s morally questionable actions are justified in certain circumstances.
We’re given ample room to make our own judgments, even if Stone ultimately and emphatically sides with Snowden.
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