Oliver Stone’s Cautionary ‘Snowden’ Will Leave You Mad

If you have not covered the camera from your computer with a Band-Aid, that’s probably the first thing you will do after seeing the new biopic of Edward Snowden, of Oliver Stone.

And that’s remarkable because “Snowden” with a but reserved simmered Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the contractor former US government who presented programs secret surveillance is not really a story about paranoia in the digital age. Although easily it could have been.

Instead, the film, which opens Friday in the United States and hits theaters in the UK on 15 October is a story of personal transformation. We met a young Snowden, serious and patriot who believes in his government and ready to serve in the special forces of the Army before starting a promising career in the CIA.

As he slowly learns how the government collects data about their friends, rivals and citizens in the name of national security, however, it becomes increasingly more cautious. Ultimately, so it has rejected what it sees as the relentless abuse of government power that risks everything to tell the world what is really happening. That act has listed as an informer or traitor, depending on your point of view.

For anyone who has heard the true Snowden talk about why he made his disclosures, the transformation will not come as a surprise.

But for new problems, or only vaguely familiar with the true Snowden people, the film could add a human being – if it is highly dramatized – dimension to their actions. This is, after all, the transformation as relayed by Stone, who also gave these great explorations of radical messages like “Born on the Fourth of July,” “JFK,” “Nixon” and “Wall Street”.

The film seems sometimes like a public service announcement long about privacy against national security. Snowden stone is caught in a CIA operation morally charged, in which you learn to use the tools for monitoring the same government that later will reveal to the public. It stands face to face with his lifelong mentor Corbin O’Brien – a fictional character, Stone told CNET – and learns that the government has hacked his girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, played by Shailene Woodley.

Finally, there is some tension formulas as Snowden fateful download files on a small computer disk as your supervisor is close, distracted by a crisis workplace.

By the end, Snowden, then 29, sees dissent as an act of patriotism. The story begins and ends with follow-up meeting in Hong Kong with reporters and cameramen who would take their story to the world. Those who emerge as the most compelling scenes in the film. The film begins to feel bloated when you deviate from the main story in scenes discussion with Mills over who can access the nude pictures on your computer.

Gordon-Levitt, who convincingly plays a computer geek and intellectual with a human side, which is known for the star becomes “Looper”, “Inception” and “500 Days of Summer.” The actor met the real Snowden at his home in exile in Moscow before filming and made its own investigation into the leak of the NSA.

In a Reddit AMA on Thursday, Gordon-Levitt said he believes “Ed” opened the conversation about privacy in the US and worldwide. Also believes Snowden should receive the forgiveness asked earlier this week.

“Personally, I think what he did was very beneficial for the country,” Gordon-Levitt also said in an interview with CNET Magazine in August. “I was talking optimistically about how technology impacts democracy and how technology could make the future a better place. I feel like you do not always hear that. He has become a symbol of the drawbacks of what technology it could be, and often talks about how technology is misused. it was very interesting to hear him speak with more optimism. ”

You may feel drawn by the drama of “Snowden”. You can also get distracted thinking being that if the events portrayed as dramatically as developed. Snowden really made smuggling NSA files outside the compound where he worked in Hawaii in a Rubik’s Cube? Snowden is true not give more details.

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