If you are somehow not familiar, Snowden is the story of Edward Snowden, a CIA/NSA contractor who gained worldwide notoriety in 2013 for exposing the US government's surveillance over - well - everyone and everything it wanted. The spine of the film is the few days in 2013 when Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon Levitt) is with a few journalists and a documentary filmmaker as they try to figure out the best way to publish/leak the information he has illegally acquired about the US government's surveillance. This is cut heavily with flashbacks, which show how he went from an aspiring Special Forces officer to CIA analyst to CIA and NSA contractor, with access to top secret government information. It's a slow burn story that only appears to sensationalize events in ways that make it easier for the audience to understand some very complex computer talk.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt (JGL, from here on) does good work. I've been pretty bothered by his choice of vocal performance in the trailers - It's a bit of an over-correction to sound like the real Ed Snowden - but in the film, I quickly adapted to it and it stopped bothering me. He does a great job of showing Ed's growing uneasy with the things he's learning about the government. It's less about big moments as it is dozens of smalls ones, so when he hits his break point, it feels right and understated. Shailene Woodley plays his girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, who is with him basically the whole time without knowing exactly what he does. It's a distanced performance. The focus is never on her and Edward isn't a chatty character. That means that there's a lot of Woodley talking at JGL, begging for him to open up. It's a thankless part that she does what she can with. Nic Cage has a small role, playing a stock, mentor character, while Rhys Ifans is the "company man" for the CIA. Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, and Tom Wilkinson convincingly play the team who releases Snowden's story via The Guardian, then a documentary. It's really JGL that makes it work though.
As I mentioned, there's times when the descriptions of things feel like massive oversimplifications, and there's a few moments that are clearly there for dramatic effect. I'm trying to stay as agnostic as I can about what Edward Snowden did because it's somewhat beside the point for a dramatized film. I'm decidedly pro-Snowden though. I could see how someone who doesn't support what he did could hate the film. It's not really possible to separate the man from the film. In fact, doing so is missing the point.
As a character study, Snowden is a success. JGL carries it all ably and resists going bigger than he has to. The script tries to not talk down to the audience, with variable success. By staying bound to the truth (or at least, the plausible), the narrative of Snowden is never able to settle into a comfortable rhythm. The plot is more of a check-list of events. The film never feels like it's telling us something new, which ends up being it's biggest drawback. This is JGL's second movie recently that is outdone by the documentary that came before it (Citizenfour in this case and previously Man on Wire outdid The Walk). In The Walk's case, it differed in that it had the fantastically shot sequence of the titular walk. There's no such angle to sell Snowden on. It's essentially Citizenfour with actors. It's still good, just not special.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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