By Emilio Frenk
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley, Tom Wilkinson, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Rysh Ifans, Timothy Olyphant, Scott Eastwood, Ben Chaplin and Nicolas Cage.
Rating: Good.
Three time Academy Award Winner Oliver Stone is back after four years of absence since his last film “Savages” and he is back with “Snowde" and besides it's flaws in narrative I was pretty satisfied with the result.
Based in real life events, the movie tells the story of Edward Joseph Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) a computer professional and his journey of how he became and employee for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) until he leaked the NSA illegal surveillance techiniques to the journalists of the“The Guardian” Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto) and Ewen MacAskill (Tom Wilkinson) and to Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo) which led to the Academy Award Winning Documentary “Citizen Four”.
During the events, the film also narrates the love story that Snowden had with the photographer Lindsay Mills (Shailene Woodley) who becames his girlfriend and she is a victim “Snowden´s” paranoia and constant epileptic attacks.
Director Oliver Stone has always managed political issues in most ofhis films and with “Snowden” was no different. I understand the use of flashbacks but some of them didn't work in this film and it coud have been a shorter film.
Oliver Stone he is one of the most predominant figures in film and made iconic films like “Platoon”, “JFK”. “Born on the Fourth of July”, “Wall Street” and many more but I didn´t see it here with “Snowden”
On the other hand is beautfully shot and I love the visuals of how Snowden´s life was when he was the at CIA and when he is about to talk with the reports and the filmmaker, and the high contrasts of the visuals.
The performance of Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Edward Snowden was remarkable as well as the majority of the cast.
The one actress that I was not convinced with her performance was Shailene Woodley as Snowden´s girlfriend. She is a very talented actress and she has given memorable and remarkable performances in movies like “The Descendants” and “The Spectacular Now” but this was not the case.
I understand for movies like this that narrates an event that led to another you need flashbacks and in a case like this is a good tool. The problem is that is how you used this tool. I mentioned previously in the review of “Sully” that the reason why the flashbacks work is because it narrates the elements that were needed and here the use was too much.
One example of this point that I´m establishing is when Snowden is in the army before he became a computer expert. This element I didn´t care about it and it was not needed.
There were interesting elements of the Third Act of the film that had a very good pacing but some of them were not necessary. Although I thought the ending was a very good one.
I give "Snowden" a good recommendation despite of the flaws in storytelling and this is for the performances which were top of the notch. I suggest you to watch "Citizen Four" before "Snowden" since it's a great documentary film and gives you more the details of the whistle blowing but still "Snowden" is satisfying and for Oliver Stone fans I hope you enjoy it.