Snowden

Plot synopsis:
Hong Kong - Monday June 3, 2013Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo) meets with columnist Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto) at a hotel. They are met by Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in the lobby. Snowden brings the two to his room to begin documenting everything that has led up to this moment.In a flashback to 2004, Snowden was enlisted in the Special Forces as a candidate. Although he was persistent, he suffered an injury when he broke his legs after landing on them during a drill. The doctor tells Snowden that his legs were broken for weeks but only now have sustained a more serious injury. He warns Snowden that the bones in his legs will turn to powder if he lands on them again, so Snowden is discharged from the military.In 2006, Snowden began training for a position at the Central Intelligence Agency. He started a class under Corbin O'Brian (Rhys Ifans). One of Snowden's first tests is to solve a problem using a sequence. Snowden finishes first, and O'Brian checks his work to see what mistake he made. Snowden explains that he solved the problem by going out of order in the sequence, to the surprise of not only O'Brian, but the rest of the class as well.Snowden befriends a professor named Hank Forrester (Nicolas Cage), who appears to have had an influence on Snowden far more than O'Brian.Outside of work, Snowden chats online with a girl named Lindsay Mills (Shailene Woodley). They finally meet up one afternoon and go for a walk around the park. Lindsay takes several photos of Snowden, and they end up having their first kiss.In the present day of June 4, 2013 in Hong Kong, Snowden, Poitras, and Greenwald are joined by Ewen MacAskill (Tom Wilkinson), an intelligence reporter from The Guardian. MacAskill reports to editor Janine Gibson (Joely Richardson) in regards to the story that Snowden is telling them.In a flashback to 2007, Snowden is stationed in Geneva, Switzerland to maintain computer network security. Lindsay joins him on his trip. He meets with a CIA agent (Timothy Olyphant) who guides him through his task.Snowden and Lindsay are at a party with a number of diplomats and other special guests in attendance. His task is to find a banker for surveillance purposes. With Lindsay's help, Snowden meets a banker named Marwan Al-Kirmani (Bhasker Patel). Later on, Snowden learns through his colleague Gabriel Sol (Ben Schnetzer) that Al-Kirmani's name is being looked up to gather personal information on him, and that the program the CIA is developing allows them to spy on people through lenses even when they are not being used. Snowden and Gabriel find out that Al-Kirmani's daughter is with a man who is seeing another woman, and is, along with his mother, living illegally in the United States.Snowden and the agent later meet up with Al-Kirmani in a hotel. Al-Kirmani appears distressed after he tells the men that his daughter's fiance and his mother got deported. The man gets drunk, and the agent encourages him to go home. After seeing how morally bankrupt the people he works for are, Snowden decides to quit the CIA. He expresses his feelings to Lindsay over the notion that he would have been responsible for the lives of millions.In 2009, Snowden begins working at Dell as a supervisor on NSA computer system upgrades. He is assigned to an airbase in Tokyo, where Lindsay follows him again. In Tokyo, he works as a subcontractor and instructs top officials on how to protect their systems from Chinese hackers.In the present day 2013, the journalists hit a bump when Janine is hesitant in publishing Snowden's documents, clashing with Greenwald in the process. MacAskill tries to keep her on their side so that they may get their work done.In 2012, Snowden works for Booz Allen Hamilton. With their ties to the NSA, Snowden begins to observe work that he finds disturbing, in which he realizes that the government is actively spying on people through a number of programs, including PRISM. He starts to collect the documents he uncovers in a dossier, all containing information on the NSA's surveillance practices.Snowden seizes his opportunity to get the documents when one team causes a problem with their work. While everyone is distracted, Snowden downloads the files onto his drive and manages to get everything he needs before someone sees. Afterward, he hides the drive in the square of a Rubik's cube and tosses it to one of the men at the gate as a friendly gesture to avoid setting off any alarms. When that's done, he walks away proudly.With his story finished, Snowden's documents are published by The Guardian. It soon gets sent to news outlets all around the world. The reports on the NSA scandal become global news. Snowden is forced to leave the country and say goodbye to Lindsay, and he is seen by many as either a traitor or a hero.The last scene is in an auditorium where Snowden makes an appearance through a remote-controlled monitor to an audience of college students. He says he would hope to return to the United States for a fair trial, but he knows now is not the time for that to happen. The moderator asks him how his life has changed since doing what he did. We then see the REAL Edward Snowden saying that he has given up a lot of things since he became a whistleblower, but he has no regrets because he knows in his heart that he was doing the right thing. The audience applauds him, and the film closes on Snowden smiling.The final text states that Edward Snowden has been living in Moscow since 2013 in hiding, and Lindsay Mills flew over there to join him.

Tags: historical, flashback

Review:
Going in I was worried that the movie would turn into an action thriller or a love story that would cloud what really happened.I was pleasantly surprised to find a step by step account of real events with a deep look at what goes on behind the scenes at the various spy agencies.Personally I would have liked a little more time spent on the politicians (and other behind the scenes players) and how they acted before and after the Snowden revelations, but maybe that's a topic for another movieI would recommend this movie to anyone interested in modern history and geopolitics.
Only this time, Oliver Stone has upgraded his latest film's look and tone to make it seem more digitally advanced, which is fine because it fits the story of Edward Snowden and we're living in this day and age where every millennial's favorite series happens to be "Mr. Robot." SNOWDEN, as you've guessed it, is a thriller about the whistleblower and former intelligence contractor, Edward Snowden, played in this film by the talented Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
This film dramatizes the events that led Snowden to becoming one of the most wanted men in the world.First, I have to give praises to Joseph Gordon-Levitt who I think went above and beyond in not only capturing Edward Snowden's mannerism and the way he speaks but my goodness, Gordon-Levitt's performance in this film is so calculating and precise, you can see his brains constantly work itself out, just by looking at him.
And Shailene Woodley gives her most mature performance yet, because this film is more than just about the whole surveillance controversy, it's also about how that negatively affects Snowden & Mills relationship and I think it's fairly handled, both aspects don't take away or diminish each other's importance in the process.When it comes to the film's dramatizing the U.S. and British global surveillance program, I'm sure there'll be questions as to how authentic the portrayal is, as far as the headquarters are concerned, for example, some may see it as a bit too much like a Bond villain's secret lair, but you'll be entertained by some of the visual effects that the film applies to showcase hacking and how one person can connect to another person and to another person and what's most fascinating about it is that there's a programmer watching the whole thing the entire time.So SNOWDEN is essentially part conspiracy thriller, part relationship drama, and to a certain extent, part heist.
Its focus is the impact of Snowden's highly secretive, demanding work on his home life – and particularly on his relationship with his girlfriend, Lindsay.The Snowden story is so bloody interesting – which makes this film interesting, thought-provoking and definitely worth a watch.
By far the biggest story of U.S. government malfeasance was uncovered in 2013, when a young man named Edward Snowden leaked out to the media and the world at large that his employers at the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, besides spying on other countries, and terrorist organizations around the world, were also spying on all the electronic communications of everybody in the United States itself.
And unsurprisingly, it was Oliver Stone, the director best known for his critiques of American political behavior with PLATOON, BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, JFK, and NIXON, who stepped into the breach of this, maybe the most important political story of our time, with SNOWDEN.Based on Luke Harding's book "The Snowden Files" and Anatoly Kucherena's book "Time Of The Octopus", SNOWDEN stars Joseph Gordon-Leavitt as a young man who, both as an intellectual conservative and a patriot, worked his way up into the highest circles of the U.S. intelligence community during the first decade of the 21st century and the War On Terror, which involved less about stopping terrorism with military force but with the force of electronics and surveillance.
He winds up at Moscow International Airport just a few days after his story hits the Internet in June 2013, and in exile, a fugitive from what passes for American justice in the 21st century.Rather surprisingly, given his penchant for doing extremely controversial movies in his career, Stone was initially fairly reluctant to touch the Edward Snowden story in any way, shape, or form.
Although Stone had been well-known for doing films with quick-edged MTV-inspired montage sequences, including his notorious 1994 film NATURAL BORN KILLERS, he avoids doing much of that in SNOWDEN, instead concentrating on the inner workings of Snowden's work, and how much harm he may have been creating in the name of National Security, as opposed to merely keeping us "safe" from any more 9/11-type terrorism.The subject matter that is broached by Stone in SNOWDEN, even with a relatively limited amount of violence and nudity (compared to other films of Stone's), is not easy to watch; nor is it necessarily easy to grasp in a lot of ways how the American people themselves, in the panic that followed September 11, 2001, basically acquiesced and allowed such mass surveillance to take place.
Oliver Stone delivers thought provoking film again, and the entire cast, as well as the writing, is stellar.For those who made up their mind about Ed Snowden through what was reported in mass media, I would simply say, watch this with an open mind.
He was Edward who saw NSA's SKYNET program, a real tool used to automate drone murders with surveillance metadata.Saying it took guts to blow whistle on corruption within the world's largest intelligence establishment is a complete understatement.While some people like Silas Davis here seem to think no large terrorist attacks must mean mass surveillance, works, The Intercept has done extensive reporting on how not only this is false, but that FBI has had to provide resources on troubled people just to get them arrested.Privacy is a universal human right, but having to hand it away for the sake of security reduces it to a a mere privilege.
It's a great Oliver stone movie, seems right up his alley to do a film About a conspiracy and about questioning the government.It's weird when people do movies about such recent events but hey that's how fast the media works these days.It's a great ensemble cast as Stone tells the story of Edward Snowden who discovered that the government was spying on us weather we did anything wrong or not and decides to let us all know.Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Snowden as a very likable guy, even if he was a Bush supporter, but most importantly he was a dude who loves his country and felt what they were doing to its citizens was wrong.As Snowden, Levitt had the biggest chunk of screen time in a film filled with well know actors taking small, but important roles, like Zachary Quinto who played the guardian journalist chosen to tell Snowden's story and Nicolas Cage who's character acted like a mentor for Snowden's at the CIA.Stone's fairness to the whole situation is painting a lovely portrait of the whistle blower himself.
Together with three experienced journalists, he's about to tell the story of his life, how it all started and how it managed to get so wrong in the end.This movie, inspired from real facts, depicts the power of the American intelligence agencies which were spying on people in order to protect them from terrorist attacks, but it all got much deeper than intended.
It's a very interesting movie, captivating I must say, which describes in detail the life of Snowden and what happened behind the scenes of the notorious intelligence agencies, who's programs were doing a lot more than invading privacy.It's very well presented, alternating present and past events, very well played by its cast and very well executed overall.
I thought that took a lot away from the real story, being that Edward Snowden was one of many ordinary government employees and what made him different is that he had the courage of his convictions to speak up and become a whistle-blower when he saw that our government was acting against the democratic principles for which this country was founded upon.The real Edward Snowden shows us that even everyday Americans can become true patriotic heroes by speaking up when they see something they know is wrong.
Considering this is a contemporary issue with an on-going raging debate about his actions, a popular movie showcasing Edward Snowden as a hero will no doubt influence the public perception whoever doesn't watch it with an open mind.Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a patriotic youngster who joins the army to serve his country.
Shailene Woodley adds a very emotional and personal touch to Snowden's complicated ordeal and is a great supporting actor in this role.Oliver Stone manages to stay true to the accounts and tells the story of what goes on in the CIA and NSA and hopes to open our eyes and start questioning our governments in regards to our personal privacy and existence.
Oliver Stone has given expression to the millions of progressives who have applauded the supposedly treasonous acts of Edward Snowden and in a lot of ways this is his greatest career accomplishment yet.As a movie, the first half is fairly miraculous given the technical nature of the action.
Based on the true events of former NSA/CIA employee Edward Snowden who became the center of equal praise and angst when he leaked thousands of classified documents to the press detailing the illegal surveillance tactics of the agencies, Stone attempts to tell the story of how Snowden eventually came to the crossroads in his life that lead him to be labelled as one of the biggest traitors in US history.Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Snowden and his voice and mannerisms seem to capture the real life character to a tee.
Along the way, Snowdwn meets Lindsay Mills (Shailene Woodley) who will become his female companion traveling the globe to stand by her man even as she is kept in the dark as to exactly the job description to which Snowden is fulfilling.The film's pulse pounding moment comes when Snowden attempts to copy and extract from the secure intelligence facility, the files that when published showed to the world how surveillance works outside the confines of both US and International Law for benefits that could never be accounted.
Even with the result never in doubt, Stone is able to lay the groundwork for some tense moments leading to Snowden's escape.This marks the second film in as many years where actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a real life character following his role as Phillippe Petit in Robert Zemeckis' under-appreciated The Walk.
But this also marks the second time Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a real life character in movie that is inferior to the documentaries that threw both stories into the spotlight.
As you could know, Oliver Stone will lean more on representing Snowden as a Hero, but not in a way that judges those who, at the end, still think of him as a traitor.Joseph-Gordon Levitt did an Oscar worthy performance as he portrays Snowden perfectly, from the physical side (his voice included) to the psychological side.
All of the rest of the cast were good too (Quinto, Ifans, etc.)I strongly suggest you to watch Citizenfour to fully capture what happened to this modern hero (imo)If you liked Oliver Stones previous movies, or you want to discover Edward Snowden, this is a great movie for you !
A Truly Excellent Film With Surprises -- A Must See. Great actors, great cinematography, great set design, great script, great direction, fascinating and meaningful story line.This movie was a heck of a lot better than I ever expected from Oliver Stone.
I expected a good film and that's pretty much what I got.Oliver Stone, someone notorious for directing political and thought provoking films in the past, tells us the story of Edward Snowden from Snowden's point of view, and how he came to eventually leak the vast amounts of intel he had access to during his time working for the U.S. government.
It's a story of the emotional struggles Snowden went through, including his relationship with his wife, his personal moral conflicts regarding the doings of the NSA and other government agencies and how his opinion on his country and government shifts over time.The acting, both by Gordon-Lewitt and the supporting cast, is on point and I was particularly impressed with Nicolas Cage in the role of Hank Forrester, as I am not someone who is too fond of Cage's works.The film delivers a very interesting insight into what happens behind the scenes and how frequently rules are broken by the government without the masses having any idea.
With Snowden, Stone tells the story of one of the biggest National Security leaks in American history.Stone's film chronicles the life of Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), from when he joined the CIA in 2004 up until 2013, when he leaked classified information regarding the illegal surveillance of American citizens to journalists working for The Guardian newspaper.Snowden struggles with the morality of techniques he's asked to deploy while working for both the CIA and NSA, while also struggling to juggle those pressures with maintaining a stable relationship with Lindsay Mills (Shailene Woodley).Snowden is by no means a bad film but I just couldn't help but feel that it should have been better.
The film works best when we see Snowden and the three journalists holed-up inside a Hong Kong hotel room discussing how they can get the story out before they're found by the American government, but we don't get enough of that.Coming to the performances, Snowden possesses a very good lead in Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Shailene Woodley heads the supporting cast as Snowden's love interest Lindsay and she does a fine job but my favourite supporting cast member was Zachary Quinto as Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalists Snowden meets with, which is probably why I wanted there to be more scenes in that hotel room.One of the worst decisions made by Oliver Stone was to have Edward Snowden himself appear in the film right at the very end.
The movie follows the life of Edward Snowden (Gordon-Levitt); from his time first serving his country (in the U.S. military), until he was labeled a traitor, by some, and a national hero, by others.
Edward Snowden Uncoveres the beginning of a "Dragnet on the whole world." The Film is Anchored by Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Smooth and In-Skin Performance while Surrounded by Responsibilities that are so Severe His Epilepsy Emerges as He is on a Trajectory that can't be Stopped.The Enormity of the Consequences of both Edward Snowden and the Governmental Agencies "Spying" on "Everyone" is what is at Stake in this "Real-Life" Story that Modernity has Yet to get a Handle.Snowden's Story is Now Well Known and the Director goes Deep in the Psyche of "Snowden" and His Personal Life as it Relates to the Stresses and Consequences of His Job as a Government Contractor, CIA and NSA Analyst.The Movie can be real Creepy at times, especially when He is with His Mentor Corbin (Rhys Ifans).
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, a highly underrated actor, does such a good job playing Snowden that at times it feels like a documentary.
There is enough information so that anyone who has been living under a rock, or for someone too young at the time to know what happened, will understand the storyline.This was moving for me to watch because people like Edward Snowden are most definitely the heroes of our world.I believe that Oliver Stone, being the film maker that he is would have kept this as straight and factual as the reality of the situation; another film maker may have tweaked here and there and ruined what needs nothing extra to make it a sensational part of history.A must see..
For those, including me, that have seen "Citizenfour" and followed this case in the media, we already know a lot about Edward Snowden and why he did what he did.I got to say, this film reminds me of the glory days of Oliver Stone, with great films like "Platoon" and "JFK".
After a long time, Oliver Stone returned with his own trademark after "Savages," four years before "Snowden" and he still on his own as well as "Platoon," "JFK," and "Born on the Fourth of July," Anything about a Vietnam war and America.Even though I think you know a lot about the chronology of this story after his last existence for hiding in Hong Kong and moving from place to place ended in Moscow, some popular media such as The Guardian and The Washington released important yet secret documents from secret spy programs run by the NSA and the government after 9/11, the United States more tightened its defenses and had to spy on its own citizens.
It came from fear because let 9/11 was the first and the last time but the steps they took weren't good enough to spy on the society's private information and the world.There is a little nuance about Oliver Stone that feels quite a thriller like other hacker movies.
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 .