Snowden (***1/2)

Oliver Stone's SNOWDEN does exactly what a film about a whistleblower must do in order to be an effective thriller: sets up the story, sets up the motivation, and presents an opinion of the subject. It's still a fairly hot-topic situation, as Snowden's massive leak to the press regarding NSA surveillance only happened a few years ago. Though the film has a few flaws that surely hamper it's overall effectiveness, the general thought presented is that "Ed" Snowden is our generation's Karen Silkwood; a hero of unlikely background.

The film is structured in a sort of flashback, with Snowden's initial leak to the press in a small Tokyo hotel room lending itself to flashbacks of his life to this point. It's hard to imagine most people not knowing who Edward Snowden is at this point, especially considering a documentary surrounding his espionage just won an Oscar not 1 year ago. The film seeks instead to provide a backstory and shade the infamous man in a more human light - painting a portrait of what would lead a patriot to betray his beloved country.

Joseph Gordon Levitt, I'll admit, has felt miscast in the past. He falls into roles greater than himself and fails to disappear into the character we see on screen. Surprisingly in "Snowden," he actually succeeds. Deepened voice, loose-fitting clothes, and the slightest stubble, Levitt all but transforms in the role (all the more compelling when the film concludes with footage of the actual man and we barely notice that it is a new person). It's hard to classify his performance as someone who is sympathetic, but overall he does an effective job playing a man who finds himself in between a rock and hard place - that is to say the internal struggle he faces seems genuine.

The backstory we follow finds Snowden meeting his long-time girlfriend, first seeing her chat on an online dating site while in military training, and finally meeting in Washington after he begins working for the CIA. Played by Shailene Woodley, the girlfriend role oftentimes falls into the category of "emotional obstacle" and in several scenes she and Snowden fight only to keep the story juicy and the plot flowing. While good in the past (The Descendants, The Fault In Our Stars) Woodley is given very little to do in this film and tries her hardest to make the role her own.

I was very much impressed with the front-half of this picture, and I found the setup and introduction to our characters to be very effective. Snowden is initially hired on to work for the CIA and has some great scenes getting to know his supervisors and teachers (one of which is Nicholas Cage in a curiously-small role). We learn about who he is, how smart he is, and how his early work with the government would ultimately shape his story. It's too bad that the rest of the film fails to match the energy. Overly-clanky with flashbacks and flashforwards, it becomes fairly tedious to journey back and forth between present-day Tokyo to Hawaii or Europe or any variety of places in the States. Oliver Stone (co-screenwriter) had a lot of material to sort through, but it seems like the structure of the story was flawed slightly along the way.

I still praise the film, with it's strong leading performance and intriguing (albeit biased) account of this decade's most notorious government leak. Yes, the film makes it clear that Edward Snowden should be regarded as a saint - someone who uncovered mass conspiracy within our government and worked only to protect the USA's citizens. The movie serves as a supplement to the real man, and perhaps can help in forming opinions of whether or not his actions were ethical. Though Oliver Stone has made better films in the past, "Snowden" is still an effective biopic that warrants a viewing.