Real-life references make it worth seeing

Rating: 6/10 (8 October 2016)

"Snowden" is a co-production between France, Germany and the United States that resulted in an English-language movie from this year. It is the newest work by Oscar-winning writer and director Oliver Stone. The film runs for considerably over 2 hours and features Oscar winner and nominees as well as Emmy and Golden Globe winners and nominees. Not gonna go into detail about the names in particular, but you can check out the cast list for that. You will probably see many familiar faces in here, even if you maybe don't recognize them right away like Melissa Leo for example. The main character is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and he is in this film for the most part, actually almost every single scene from start to finish, except at the very end where the camera turns too the real Edward Snowden in a fairly cringeworthy attempt to make this an even more relevant movie. But it does not need to try so hard really because the subject of this film is relevant enough already with how little time has passed since Snowden uncovering the NSA details.
The film focuses a lot on this process of uncovering as major parts play in the hotel room where Snowden interacted with Laura Poitras (who won an Academy Award for her documentary on the subject) and the other reporters who made his story happen. But I must say I found these inclusions a bit off-putting as they switched so randomly between what happened in the past and the (then) present and the filmmakers' attempts to connect these different times weren't really successful and looked even pretty amateurish at times. What I did like, however, was how they brought in a more personal note with the help of Shailene Woodley's character. It may have been a bit too much and this was one of many areas where they could have cut parts, but I do believe these love relationship (struggle) parts were essential in making this film as it is as much about the private life of Snowden as it is about the professional life. The personal life parts (just some, not all of these) were among the best the movie had to offer and otherwise the scenes that managed to walk the fine line between being informative, but not too complicated about the subject, were the best the film had to offer, especially if a nice musical score came with these.
JGL was physically fine for the role and he also gave one of his best career performances, but I still think this was nothing too great to be raved about. The looks certainly were something that helped the actor in delivering from start to finish and he also got help from more experienced actors such as Nicolas Cage, even if they only play very small roles and don't have so much screen time like in his very case. All in all, it is a decent summary of the events in Snowden's tumultuous life in the last decade. I believe there are parts that the film could have done without and at 110 minutes maybe, or even 100, it would have been an even better watch. It is a bit bloated. And in general, I also think that the film offers very little apart from a decent acting moment (and Woodley) that you would not find in a competent documentary on the subject of Edward Snowden. But overall, it is still a decent achievement. There aren't many standout moments really and the film is definitely more ambitious than good, but as a whole it succeeds in telling an interesting story that also future generations should learn about. And from that perspective, I give it a thumbs-up.