In 2016, Oliver Stone launched his movie about nationwide safety whistleblower Edward Snowden. Not like many different of the director’s initiatives, “Snowden” was a surprisingly restrained affair, buoyed by a standout efficiency from Joseph Gordon-Levitt because the titular intelligence subcontractor. Removed from being uninteresting, nonetheless, the “Snowden” stays an underrated spy film which is properly value a revisit 10 years after it flopped in theaters. Fortunately, the film simply hit Netflix.
In 2013, Snowden revealed the existence of a number of international surveillance packages through categorized Nationwide Safety Company paperwork which he smuggled out of the company and delivered to journalists. Following his disclosure, his passport was revoked, and Snowden sought asylum in Russia, the place he nonetheless lives to today. Stone could not resist telling his story.
“Snowden” was written by Stone and Kieran Fitzgerald and based mostly on Luke Harding’s ebook “The Snowden Information” and Anatoly Kucherena’s “Time of the Octopus.” It explores how, following his navy service, Snowden joins the intelligence companies and grows more and more disillusioned with their practices, recognizing the unconstitutional nature of a number of surveillance measures earlier than leaking details about them to the press. Stone views him as a heroic determine and his movie follows that line. However other than providing some essential insights into the whistleblowing debacle itself, “Snowden” boasts considered one of Gordon-Levitt’s finest performances and is definitely considered one of one of the best hacker motion pictures you will see.
Snowden is as related right this moment because it was in 2016
“Snowden” follows the titular whistleblower from his Military coaching days by means of to his time on the CIA and his hiring by the NSA. In addition to seeing how Edward Snowden smuggled paperwork out of his company (a Rubik’s Dice is concerned) we additionally see how his relationship along with his now-wife Lindsay Mills (performed within the movie by Shailene Woodley) develops.
Oliver Stone motion pictures have all the time clearly expressed the director’s viewpoint and right here he unapologetically depicts Snowden as a patriotic activist doing the precise factor. That was all the time going to show controversial amongst those that take into account him a traitor and opportunist. Regardless, Stone’s film raises essential questions on civil liberties and democracy that stay simply as related a decade later as they did again in 2016. Not solely does the movie interrogate the problems Snowden himself was involved with, i.e. mass authorities surveillance, it additionally speaks to how that authorities handled Snowden within the aftermath of his revelation. As Abbie Hoffman as soon as famously put it, “You measure democracy by the liberty it provides its dissidents, not the liberty it provides its assimilated conformists” — one thing that absolutely stays pertinent in right this moment’s political local weather.
Sadly, none of that made for any important business success, with “Snowden” making $37.3 million on a finances of $40 million. However loads of critics appeared impressed with the film. On Rotten Tomatoes, “Snowden” has a critic rating of 61% based mostly on 261 opinions with of Ann Hornaday of The Washington Put up describing it as “a perfectly crafted, engrossing movie” and A.O. Scott of the New York Instances commending Stone on making “an honorable and absorbing contribution to the imaginative document of our complicated occasions.” The movie hit Netflix on July 15, 2026 and is offered to stream proper now.
