Snow­den – first look review

For any­one who has seen Lau­ra Poitras’ CIT­I­ZEN­FOUR, which doc­u­ment­ed the all but real-time release of whistle­blow­er Edward Snowden’s rev­e­la­tions about the NSA, Oliv­er Stone’s Snow­den will like­ly prove frus­trat­ing. From its open­ing scene, the film will­ing­ly expos­es itself to unfavourable com­par­i­son by opt­ing to start at the exact same time and place as the crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed documentary.

What made Poitras’ doc­u­men­tary so com­pelling was the con­trast between the qui­et of Snowden’s Hong Kong hotel room – the film’s sole loca­tion – and the dra­mat­ic impli­ca­tions of his actions for the out­side world. That ten­sion is com­plete­ly lost here thanks to the grotesque over-drama­ti­sa­tion forced onto the events and characters.

Con­struct­ed as a series of flash­backs show­ing Snow­den (Joseph Gor­don-Levitt) relat­ing infor­ma­tion to jour­nal­ists in his hotel room, the film packs many details of the man’s real life sto­ry in its 134-minute run­time. But per­haps because of the vast­ness of that scope, it also lim­its itself to a small set of char­ac­ters, cre­at­ing a bub­ble which often feels dis­con­nect­ed from real­i­ty. Despite being earnest, well shot and boast­ing a riv­et­ing sound­track, the film fails to com­mu­ni­cate the mag­ni­tude of the whistleblower’s actions and discoveries.

That dis­con­nect feels espe­cial­ly strong at the end of the film. In a stir­ring epi­logue, Snow­den, now a pub­lic fig­ure, repeat­ed­ly men­tions that pow­er now belongs to ​“the peo­ple” – a burst of patri­o­tism that seems insin­cere for a man por­trayed as a social­ly awk­ward recluse. It’s as though Stone deemed the sto­ry not worth telling if there was any ambi­gu­i­ty about Snowden’s ded­i­ca­tion to Amer­i­ca and its citizens.

Even more jar­ring is Stone’s attempt at romance, depict­ing the banal rela­tion­ship between Snow­den and girl­friend Lind­say Mills in a tedious sub­plot. Shai­lene Wood­ley does her best in a thank­less role, but her char­ac­ter is nev­er more than a naïve nui­sance. The men­tion of Mills’ career as an erot­ic pho­tog­ra­ph­er, as well as her teach­ing pole danc­ing class­es on the side, is a cheap attempt to inject some sex into what is oth­er­wise a very unsexy story.

Else­where, Rhys Ifans’ CIA scout is por­trayed as a pure­ly evil, moral­ly cor­rupt man, while Melis­sa Leo’s low-key turn as Lau­ra Poitras is by con­trast real­is­tic and humane, as is Ben Schnetzer’s per­for­mance as a friend­ly cowork­er of Snowden’s. But the real win­ner here is Joseph Gor­don-Levitt. Not pro­vid­ing a per­for­mance so much as an imper­son­ation, his gen­uine­ly impres­sive resem­blance to the nat­u­ral­ly restrained man works in his favour and grounds the film in a more plau­si­ble ver­sion of reality.

Yet although Gor­don-Levitt pres­ence helps to keep us invest­ed in the sto­ry, you’ll be left won­der­ing how this dull, over­long film might have turned out in the hands of a less bom­bas­tic film­mak­er. The appear­ance of the real Edward Snow­den, play­ing him­self at the end of the film, is the cher­ry on a cake of mis­guid­ed­ness and pom­pos­i­ty. What should be an ele­gant, awe-inspir­ing, ground­ing moment instead comes off as tri­umphal­ist and silly.