You have seen actors physically transforming into characters but in Snowden, Joseph Gordon-Levitt goes the extra mile and does a perfect voice impression too.The movie has been called a biopic,it switches to docudrama and almost into a documentary in the final scenes but the fact is it’s actually a horror movie that would make The Conjuring look like a musical.At least you knew that what you saw in Conjuring wasn’t for real.Facebook’s my bitch says the NSA hacker when he tells an uninitiated Snowden that he can access cams on shut laptops,in one particular scene and you feel a chill down your spine that you know is not the AC in the cinema hall.
The movie starts off pretty much like the Guardian article which describes his first contact as a whistleblower and some of the scenes are right out of the documentary Citizenfour.You feel that you’re almost in fact watching the making of Citizenfour in the first few scenes.Oliver Stone pays tribute to his magnum opus JFK in the form of portraits on walls, more than once.Stone expresses his dislike for the “military industrial complex” and it’s reach in the congress and policy making here too and I don’t think it was a coincidence that this was almost in the same scene as the JFK tribute.
From Nicolas Cage to Tom Wilkinson to Timothy Olyphant, a slew of actors make extended cameos in this film which is a Gordon-Levitt show at the end of the day.Offering him some semblance of competition is Rhys Evans who is one of the most versatile actors out there today and personally i believe that he deserved an Oscar for his turn as “Shakespeare” in Anonymous of 2011.
Stone takes you through Snowden’s journey from a true blue patriot and soldier who took orders without questions to a soul torn between his mentors,his values and of course love.America is a business, said Brad Pitt in Killing Them Softly, this is not about terrorism, this is about economics, the supreme power of your government and social control, terrorism is an excuse says Gordon-Levitt in this movie about the NSA whistleblower. And no Oliver Stone movie would be complete without a moving monologue by the lead actor,we watched Kevin Costner doing that in JFK and Gordon-Levitt gets his due here or, should i say Snowden?
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gopakumarpurushothaman 