Stone plays it safe

Rating: 6/10 (14 December 2016)

If truth be told, I found Snowden a little dull. It is hard to make tapping keyboards dramatic, although director Oliver Stone does well to avoid the sci-fi visual melodrama of, for example, Blackhat. But there were too many occasions where I barely understood what was going on.
Stone reigns back on his own directorial flourishes- exemplified by Natural Born Killers - to tell the story straight. Some critics have unfavorably compared the movie to Citizen Four, a documentary. Although I haven't seen that, I can't say such a comparison is meaningful. Snowden is a film through and through. Stone explores Snowden's past and his present, including much that couldn't be shot by the documentary crew. Stone brings Snowden's secret world to life.
Stone uses the filming of Citizen Four as a framing device. There are 'artistic' touches - Snowden is often represented as walking alone into the distance, distorted by reflective images and white light. But my favourite directorial moment comes just after Snowden has seen field ops hack a lap top and surreptitiously turn it on to record a young woman in her hotel room. Stone cuts to Snowden making love to his girlfriend. Then, without really calling attention to it, we become aware of Snowden's own computer lurking on a wardrobe.
I felt Stone lost the plot with JFK and Snowden redeems him a bit in my eyes, although Snowden a less compelling film than JFK - it is easier to be melodramatic when you are confusing your audience with lies. One thing Snowden does do is cast a shadow over the Obama presidency when mass surveillance of everyone was the norm.
But then there had been 9/11. If you were president, what would you authorize to keep your nation safe? The answer I guess is that what is being protected is liberty and freedoms of thought , word and deed. If you loose those in the name of security then there is little left worth protecting.
Still, with UK Prime Minister Theresa May's snooper's charter being enacted in 2017, life is set to become more Orwellian in the UK. The internet is about to become the government's spy in your living room.
In fact, if the events in Snowden are true - and they are - much i have written above may well have started red flags flying in a tiny corner of the inter-web. Worrying. And, like walking down a street bristling with CCTV cameras, after watching Snowden I don't feel safe at all.