Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Snowden Blu-ray Movie Review

"There are other ways to serve your country."

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson December 29, 2016

In an interview while promoting his film, White Bird in a Blizzard (2014), Gregg Araki recalls telling Shailene Woodley that she reminded him of Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a lot of ways. Araki cited that they both started working in the industry as child actors, have appeared in movies and TV shows at a young age, do not starve for the next paycheck (and hence choose their projects selectively), and approach cinema in a creative and pure way. I would add that they bring an intuitive understanding to the roles they play. It was only a matter of time until Araki or another director would find a project to pair these two smart, attractive actors together. That task fell to Oliver Stone who asked Gordon-Levitt to play the part of whistle-blower Edward Snowden and then offered Woodley the chance to co-star as Snowden's girlfriend, the photographer Lindsay Mills. The relative prominence of Mills in Stone's biopic diverges from the Oscar-winning documentary Citizenfour (2014) in which Mills receives little to no coverage (and is not even seen). Critics have chastised Stone for creating a hagiography out of his subject but it is Mills who convinces Snowden that he is too self-absorbed and obsessed with his work to care and devote his attention to others' well-being.

The narrative structure and camerawork of Snowden relies considerably on Citizenfour. Stone makes the wise choice of using the Mira Hotel in Hong Kong as the centerpiece of his story for it was the locale where Snowden made his startling revelations about the NSA's bulk collection of people's personal data as well as the surveillance tactics of intelligence agencies. The scenes in Hong Kong comprise the film's "present time" as Stone flashes back and forth between Snowden's interviews in June 2013 and the events that transpired in his life nearly a decade before. It is apparent that Stone and his cast/crew studied the mise-en-scène of Citizenfour very closely. The actors' facial expressions, gestures, general placement in front of the camera, as well as movements mimic their real-life counterparts in Laura Poitras's nonfiction feature. The chameleonic Melissa Leo steps into Poitras's shoes while Zachary Quinto looks and sounds just like Poitras's frequent collaborator, the investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald. The always dependable Tom Wilkinson portrays Ewen MacAskill, the Washington DC bureau chief for The Guardian, which first unveiled Snowden's story.

Fugitive Snowden takes refuge in Hong Kong.

Stone and co-writer Kieran Fitzgerald set up their script to evolve into a conversion narrative. The first flashback occurs in a pre-dawn set Fort Benning, GA (ca. 2004) where Snowden and his fellow Army trainees participate in rigorous drills and exercises as part of advanced infantry training. Snowden is taught to think and perform like a US soldier. His first date with Mills happens outside the White House where the couple stroll among protesters staging antiwar demonstrations. Snowden believes in the Patriot Act and Operation Iraqi Freedom, informing Mills that he has friends who are serving overseas. His progressive-leaning girlfriend disavows him, proclaiming that she disagrees with US policy toward the war effort. In subsequent scenes depicting Snowden's various jobs with the CIA and NSA, Stone shows how his protagonist's conscience and ways of thinking about government intervention, national security policies, and privacy laws undergo a thoroughgoing shift. In the foreword to the published screenplay of Snowden, Salon.com's David Talbot makes the apt comparison of aligning Snowden's journey from a conservative, young patriot to a fervid advocate of civil liberties with that of Ron Kovic's, who transforms from a gung-ho marine into an ardent antiwar activist in Stone's Born on the Fourth of July (1989). Early in Snowden, the title character prepares for soldiering but a spill from his bunk-bed forces him into the hospital. The quotation in the deck of this review comes from a doctor who tells Snowden that he has two broken legs and will receive an administrative charge. There are plenty of other ways one can serve his/her country, he tells the injured Army recruit. The character's predicament is quite similar to Kovic's who becomes paralyzed from the waist down and must find alternative methods to aid his nation. (You can read my analysis of Kovic's conversion as well as the antiwar discourse of Born on the Fourth of July's literary and cinematic texts in an article published in the Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance.)

Stone equips his film's hero with two surrogate fathers who share differing worldviews. Having to choose a competing dualistic paternal figure is a thematic trope that Stone has deployed before in Platoon (1986), Wall Street (1987) and its sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010). While training to become a CIA operative, Snowden meets Hank Forrester (Nicolas Cage), an engineer who built radio spyware, encryption machines, and supercomputers during the Cold War. Snowden has an amicable, trusting relationship with Forrester, who grew up during the Kennedy years. Forrester's altruism contrasts markedly with Corbin O'Brian (Rhys Ifans), Snowden's Senior Instructor at the CIA who fastidiously shares certain secrets with his young protégé but also bends the truth. There is a clandestine meeting between Snowden and O'Brian in one of Virginia's wooded hillsides that reminds me of the secret rendezvous between Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) and Mr. "X" (Donald Sutherland) in JFK (1991). (O'Brian is akin to X in both attire and his profound knowledge of covert intelligence operations.) Ifans's O'Brian receives substantially more screen time than Cage's character but it is clear by the third act whose philosophy Snowden ascribes to.

Snowden contains many "talk-about" scenes but Stone and his cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle keep the picture consistently watchable by varying the color temperature of certain shots and individual sequences as well as putting the camera in different positions to provide alternate (aerial) perspectives (see screenshot #10). The movie features key supporting performances by Joely Richardson, Scott Eastwood, Ben Schnetzer, and Ben Chaplin. Stone and Fitzgerald based their script on books about Snowden by Anatoly Kucherena and Luke Harding. They eschew the traditional comprehensive biopic for an insightful two-plus hour examination of the professional and personal risks a courageous American took to expose the intelligence community's web of deceptions and lies.

Snowden Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Snowden appears in the aspect ratio of 2.40:1, which preserves the framing of its theatrical exhibition. Universal places the two-hour and fourteen-minute feature on a BD-50 with an AVC encode averaging 30977 kbps. Shot all digitally on the Arri Alexa, the movie is virtually devoid of source flaws or imperfections. As he does often in his films, Stone incorporates different visual styles. Colors are sometimes desaturated whereas other times hues appear rich and vibrant (such as the outdoor scenes in Hawaii). Skin tones look completely natural and one can spot the creases beneath Gordon-Levitt's right eye in shot #8. Stone includes some images that are seen through Poitras's camera (possibly her Sony NEX-FS100) and other black-and-white snapshots taken by Mills's Nikon (see #17). I did notice a little bit of aliasing on shots of wired servers/networks and a scant trace of shimmering on the rim of Snowden's glasses. Still, this is a nearly immaculate transfer.

Universal has divided the movie up into twenty chapter stops that can be bookmarked.

Snowden Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Universal has provided only one audio track: an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track encoded at 3489 kbps. Dialogue is always crisp and the bass exhibits a deep resonance in the center channel. The score by Craig Armstrong and Adam Peters dominates the surround channels. The keyboard and electronic sounds demonstrate distinctive separation when a cue hits a certain pitch or an instrument is amplified. The sound track also contains a female vocal backed by piano that is highly reminiscent of Mark Isham's music for the film Men of Honor (2000). Nature and ambient sounds are lightly accented on the surrounds during the nighttime party scene in Hawaii.

Universal has supplied optional English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles for the main feature.

Snowden Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Director Oliver Stone (digital exclusive) - this commentary track is accessible only through the digital redemption code printed on the insert. I clicked on the "iTunes Extras" icon using the latest version of iTunes on my Sony VAIO and the menu is cumbersome. Universal uses the movie's poster as a backdrop but there was no text or buttons when I got there. They were invisible and I had to randomly click on something to see a menu actually displaying the extras. I eventually got to the commentary but those using Apple TV and other platforms will hopefully find navigation a bit easier. This is the eighteenth commentary that Oliver Stone has recorded for the twenty feature films he has directed. (He recorded two tracks for the Director's Cut found on the Buena Vista DVD of Nixon.)

• Deleted Scenes (8:51, 1080p) - five clips that are either stand-alone deleted scenes, alternate takes or extended scenes from the final cut. They can be played individually or as a compilation.

• Finding the Truth (3:57, 1080p) - a very brief promotional featurette that is essentially an extended trailer. We hear excerpts from the EPK of Stone and Gordon-Levitt talk about what attracted them to the project and how they collaborated to bring Snowden's story to the screen.

• Snowden: Q&A (41:00, 1080p) - Moderated by Rogerebert.com's Matt Zoller Seitz in New York, this panel discussion features director/co-writer Oliver Stone, stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Shailene Woodley, and the real Edward Snowden via video satellite from Moscow. This simulcast (aka Snowden Live) was broadcast by Fathom Events nationwide on September 14, 2016 in select theaters after a showing of Snowden. Stone author Seitz covers a variety of topics along with his guests. A reader informed me that this is the original length of Snowden Live. It immediately followed a screening of the main feature.

• Previews - trailers for The Girl on the Train, Jason Bourne, Bridget Jones's Baby, Kevin Hart: What Now?, Fifty Shades Darker, In a Valley of Violence, Don't Think Twice, Desierto, A Tale of Love and Darkness, Hitchcock/Truffaut, and Frank & Lola, which all load after the disc's insertion and can also be accessed as a montage through the main menu.

Snowden Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Snowden is an intelligent drama and a leisurely paced cyber-hacker thriller. Though the movie fared better critically in the US compared to some of Stone's more recent pictures, it struggled to bring in large domestic audience ($21 million at the box office). I realize that the relatively slow pace may be trying for viewers but they will be rewarded with a compelling biopic that packs a lot of information in its run time. Universal delivers exceptional video and crystal clear audio. It's too bad that Universal could not have put Stone's commentary on the Blu-ray but this standard edition still comes HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.