Snowden (2016) - Stone's inflammatory political thriller is a powerful must-see

♥♥♥♥♥

 

+ Best Biopic of the Year

Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the gentle title character on a sleek poster for Oliver Stone's Snowden

 

Snowden is the 20th fiction feature from great New-Yorker filmmaker Oliver Stone (Born on the Fourth of July (1989)). It is written by Stone and Kieran Fitzgerald (The Homesman (2014)), based on two novels: Luke Harding's (WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy (2011)) non-fiction The Snowden Files (2014) and Anatoly Kucherena's (We Cannot Do Without Bloodshed (2003)) fictionalized Time of the Octopus (2015).

Edward Snowden, a precarious but deeply dedicated young American male, finds out that he can best serve his country by using his prodigal computer skills, working for the NSA and CIA. Over the course of several years, he is increasingly distraught by the covert tactics of his government, leading up to his becoming a whistle-blower for The Guardian in 2013.

Stone, once again, succeeds with a controversial, highly relevant and political current issue, - namely that of Edward Snowden and the mass surveillance and privacy infringement and espionage perpetrated by the US government. His film is arguably more important, inflammatory and needed than any other he has done in decades. As such, it is this year's The Big Short (2015); a thrillingly substantial outlaying of outrageous recent history; eye-opening and assured in its conviction: That Snowden is no suspicious expat that deserves decades behind bars or to rot in his involuntary refuge in Russia, but is, in fact, an American hero, a brave friend of the common man and an excellent citizen.

Cinematically, Snowden isn't as innovative as Big Short. But it's solid all-around, deftly illuminating the problems of mass surveillance in the digital age while letting us ever closer to its title protagonist and his struggles as a loyal citizen with increasingly burdening knowledge and feelings of complicity.

Thanks to a stellar cast that Stone has managed to gather, the film becomes a riveting encounter: Joseph Gordon-Levitt (10 Things I Hate about You (1999)) has a smugness that peaks through his otherwise impressive performance; he really embodies Snowden credibly. Shailene Woodley (The Fault in Our Stars (2014)) is, once again, excellent, here as the very normal, loving girlfriend. Rhys Ifans (Another Me (2013)) and Nicholas Cage (Drive Angry (2011)) appear and are great in minor but pivotal parts, and the cast is full of exceptional actors; young up-and-comers like Scott Eastwood (Diablo (2015)) and Ben Schnetzer (Pride (2014)) and more seasoned actors like Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood (2004-06)), Joely Richardson (101 Dalmatians (1996)), Tom Wilkinson (RocknRolla (2008)), Zachary Quinto (Star Trek Beyond (2016)) and Melissa Leo (Flight (2012)).

Don't go into Snowden expecting a break-neck paced conventional thriller. - Its hero is a geek, and it's about technology and the real world, which is thrilling in another way. - But no less thrilling, mark you. Snowden is a must-see.

 

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Watch an official trailer for the film here

Cost: 40 mil. $

Box office: 22.7 mil. $ and counting

= Too early to say

[Snowden premiered September 9 (Toronto International Film Festival) and runs 134 minutes. Stone was working on a film about Martin Luther King's last years with Jamie Foxx starring when he started getting contacted about Snowden and eventually went to Russia and met him. Stone allegedly paid 0.7 mil. $ for the rights to Harding's book and 1 mil. $ for the rights to Kucherena's, scrapping the King biopic. Financing proved tough: Stone and his producer financed the film themselves until 8 days before production, when French and German financing came through: Probably due to its controversial content, it was not possible to get American financing for Snowden. The film was shot in 62 days from February - April in Munich, Germany, Moscow, Hawaii, Washington, D.C. and Hong Kong. The budget was so tight that when Stone's mother passed away, he had to miss her US funeral, because the production couldn't afford any delay. Fears of surveillance and hacking by the NSA made the cast and crew adhere to special precautions during production. Gordon-Levitt, who had also gone to Moscow to meet Snowden and his girlfriend to prepare for his part, donated his entire salary to the production. The release was pushed out from a December 2015 release until the fall of 2016. The film opened #4, behind Sully, Blair Witch and Bridget Jones' Baby, to an 8 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spend its 2nd week in #5 and then left the top 5 and has to date grossed just 18.8 mil. $. The film has yet to open in several important markets like France, Germany, Spain, the UK, Italy and Japan, and hopefully it will still gather the much larger audiences it deserves, and avoid becoming a major flop. Snowden is fresh at 63 % with a 6.3 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Snowden?