Who's the good guy and who's the bad guy

Rating: 9/10 (2 September 2018)

Generally speaking we all love our country and are patriotic but this film really questions who is the good guy and who is the bad guy .
This is a well documented true story so there's no spoilers here but what is great about Oliver Stone's movie is story behind the story - great storytelling about the background to how Ed Snowden got to be where he was and there was no doubting his patriotism right from the start but in the end the machine ( being the government ) like skynet turned on its owners and started to spy on those who were their ultimate paymasters without their authority without their knowledge and what he did by being a 'traitor' was an act of heroism depending upon how you feel a government should be allowed to go in the pursuit of knowledge about ordinary folk under the false pretence that it is in the name of national security , rather than an inability to keep one's hands out of the cookie jar .
The film keeps your interest from start to finish and tells the story in a series of flashbacks starting from the meeting with the Guardian journalists in Hong Kong . You feel like your watching a Modern day Turin played by young Kevin Spacey lookalike . Rhys Ifans deserves praise for his acting without a trace of his trademark welsh accent . The love between his girlfriend and him with the added pressure of stress at work , his moral dilemma and failing health all adding to the drama .
You are left hoping the real Ed Snowden is allowed to return to his home country and receive a fair trial or amnesty for you feel what he did was in the interests of the freedom of the people who in a free world should be able to trust their own government.
Finally what it does do is show how prophetic the 1998 ( pre 9/11 ) film ENEMY OF THE STATE was where everything revealed in this film prophecized !
Pad.A 9/10