Film Review : Snowden

Dear Guys, 

Now after reviewing several books, I'd like to talk about movie and review it. And for this first film review I choose Snowden. Why ? Because I have soft spot for hacker. he he. Here we go 

Snowden (2016) was created based on real controversial people named Edward Snowden. There are many books about Edward Snowden. But for this movie, it was based on book tittled The Snowden Files by Luke Harding and Time of the Octopus by Anatoly Kucherena. For information Snowden is NSA contractor employed by Booz Allen Hamilton. He is a whistleblower that revealed thousands of NSA classified documents to journalists. This movie tell Snowden story from his employment with CIA until his living arrangement in Russia with girlfriend Lindsay. Personally I don't like Joseph Gordon Levitt cas Snowden. It was not because he is bad actor, vice versa he is great actor. It just that he doesn't fit Snowden in my eyes. But it turns out he did quite good job. The movie was directed by Oliver Stone. For better or worse, I don't like the way he made this movie. Once again it is not because it was bad movie, but it feels quite boring. It was too long and slow. Based on the opening, you'd think there's gonna be big showdown between NSA and Snowden. But no, they keep moving forward like it was nothing. 

For the characters itself, there's rarely any background about who's doing what, especially the journalists part. For people that know who's mentioned maybe there' no problem. Like Barrack Obama, I mean who doesn't know Barrack Obama. But for the others, let's just say that this is Snowden story. Some influential journalists doesn't need to steal the spotlight from Snowden even for several minutes. I don't read the book so I don't know how much liberty the director and script writer take from the book. But I can tell there's not much if there's any since there are some gap between some scene. Like how did Snowden go into Russia without detected by US, how could NSA security doesn't scan the cubic, or how could Snowden copy the file in the first place (you'd think they would disable copy paste function or at least disable the hardware part). To be fair, there's also rumor that Snowden is double agent. Certainly this movie doesn't answer question that you may have about Snowden. 

Despite its flaw, I quite like the ending style in which suddenly it was changed from Joseph into the real Edward Snowden that gives speech using Robot. Overall, I don't feel satisfied with the movie. It is not bad perse, but it could have been better. I have a feeling that Mr Stone doesn't dare to take many liberty regarding this controversial character. So, he just stick to known and safe information. And because of that, it feels more like documentary rather than thriller movie. Not to mention there's lack of emotion and chemistry between Joseph and Shailene Woodley. 

My rating : 3 of 5 stars. 

Regards, 

Angela