"I haven't trusted anyone in years."

Rating: 8/10 (8 March 2019)

The only thing I know for sure after watching this film is that I don't know anything for sure. The only other time I was as conflicted about a real live event like Snowden's release of information about NSA surveillance was the uncovering of the Pentagon Papers during the Nixon era. That was supposed to jeopardize national security, but well after the fact, nothing really ever came of it. So even though the NSA was directed to clean up it's act, how do we know for sure? And now, we have Facebook under the gun for it's intrusion into the privacy of everyday Americans and the selling of information to any entity willing to pay for it.
What I CAN say about the film is that it was very well done. With Oliver Stone at the helm though, you have one more added element to consider regarding how accurate everything portrayed in it is, and depending on your ideological viewpoint, whether Edward Snowden, here portrayed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, was a first class traitor or not. Again, conflicted at the outset when this story broke, I did indeed regard Snowden a traitor for releasing classified information, but as time marches on, one has to consider that he might have done the country a service by exposing the methods used by the government to spy on it's citizens (pretty much the same way the goliath tech companies do it without any oversight, although that day of reckoning seems to be coming).
So in this era of fake news and deeply divided partisanship, what do we really know? I'd like to think the movie was a fairly accurate portrayal of what occurred to convince Edward Snowden to do what he did, but with the spin doctors working overtime, I don't know that we'll ever find out. And I don't know If Snowden will ever clearly see the light of day again. This is a story that hasn't come to an end yet.