Snowden

Snowden (2016) covers the stretch from Edward Snowden joining the NSA to leaking the documents. The frame is the hotel room in Hong Kong: Snowden meets the journalists and talks. The film moves back from there. Enlisting in the army, CIA training, a posting in Geneva, Japan, Hawaii. At each stop he sees a slightly larger piece of the surveillance system. The best of it is the technical part: how a person's laptop camera is switched on, how one search query opens up everyone around a person. The production was troubled in a way that matched the subject. American studios stayed out; the money came from Europe and it was largely shot in Germany. Oliver Stone met Snowden in Moscow repeatedly while writing it. Joseph Gordon-Levitt worked separately on matching the real Snowden's voice and speech rhythm. Stone's usual editing violence is absent; the telling is surprisingly calm. The documentary Citizenfour covers the same events with real footage and most viewers find it stronger. It runs 134 minutes. Good for: true events, surveillance, and the politics of technology. Less good for: the film stands on Snowden's side and gives no room to the counterargument, and the pace sags in places.