Snowden

Director Oliver Stone’s Snowden is an interesting drama, showing the evolution of a conservative individual, Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), as he moves from Special Forces trainee, to CIA, to NSA and, gradually, sees that individuals in the Government are betraying his concept of fairness under the guise of “national security.”

The film is a cross between docu-drama, thriller and love story and, while all of those are, individually, intriguing, the cornucopia is also the film’s weakness.

Shailene Woodley as Snowden’s girlfriend Lindsay Brown, Melissa Leo as documentarian Laura Poitras and Rhys Ifans as Snowden’s boss Corbin O’Brian all do a fabulous job of drawing in the audience, but Snowden’s ultimate purpose of creating a national dialogue of citizens deciding what kind of Country the U.S. should be, i.e., authoritarian or free, is not hammered home strongly enough.

Although I think everyone should see this film, especially since the Congress has been trying to demonizing Snowden, I can only give Snowden a 3.8 out of 5.