Great Film overall

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

This movie was absolutly excellent! The only people that would rate this movie bad are liberals or anyone that doesnt agree with what he did because they probably work for the shady part of the government. The rubix cube scene was absolutly genius. I have paid to see this movie 3 times when it was in theater all with different people. Amazinf movie!!

When you look at a production you must always remember there are script writers and a director as well producers involved with the creation of the production.There are agendas and deadlines, as well, requirements for length, language, legal and other variables to take in to consideration.Names, places and times are changed. Scripts are written to fit a mold.While this movie presents the ideal of stopping a Big Brother government from spying on all the people and collecting information to be used at a later time against the public should you do something considered to be a threat to the political and religious nature of the government, it is still a movie.I thought the casting was very good, the script moved along smoothly. I enjoyed the cinematography. I enjoyed the ending.However, I do not believe Snowden is a patriot but I do not believe he is a terrorist either. He is a young man who was put in to a position of questioning his job and the desire for his government to spy on their own people.He had morals and ethics, which is more than I can say for any part of the American government for the last 100 years. He felt what was happening was wrong and that he needed to expose the truth.I do not believe what he did was wrong, I think he did it for righteous reasons, but he also harmed America and released information which set in motion another moment when America was weakened and put in to a position of international stress.It's a good movie, but it isn't perfect.

The problem is this; If you just make it publicly known that; "Your information is being surveilled", without really digging deep into the ramifications of such an invasion, the public won't care, much like the more recent Facebook scandal. What I'm trying to say is, news feel like just news, not reality. News feel like that 30 minutes with adverts in between, like a TV show."Verizon is hacking into all your phone calls" is interpreted by the public as; "Sure, but not my phone calls". I mean here we are, "reviewing" on IMDb without a care as to what is being tapped into.Films like Snowden and The Big Short, and and and, are important and more than just movies. Their topics are difficult to articulate perhaps, but, they transcend entertainment.As a film however, Snowden was sluggish at points, but I do feel it did put in a concerted effort to simplify as best as it could, the applications and repercussions of the missions and actions in play.This movie also kept unveiling some pretty serious star power I didn't know it had, and of that star presence, Zachary Quinto was the most quintessential.Some aspects in Snowden were hard to follow; "All this effing intelligence jargon is hurting our brains". That line was so appropriate, true (Hell, it even gave Ed himself a seizure, and they called it "epilepsy") and incredibly funny, that it showed me that Snowden was self aware, however, amidst all that jargon, I understood one thing as it was mentioned; Going to Hawaii was OBVIOUSLY a TERRIBLE idea, if the aim was for Ed to have, "less stress"!!!Like I said, Snowden is one of those movies that, expose a truth that never really dies, no matter how much it's said that it has, and that is significant. And, in this movie, that story is illustrated quite efficiently, though a bit slow at times. 7/10.

Edward Snowden. Some may view him as a criminal for breaking the law and leaking secure information from the NSA, however the film took a more patriotic approach and portrayed him as a hero for revealing this information to the world. It's a very tricky subject. Did he have any right to go against his government and be considered a traitor? Perhaps, if it meant that the public knew that they were being spied on. Privacy is such an integral part of our interconnected lives, so my views may suggest that I agree with Snowden's actions...but as a self-proclaimed critic I shall remain unbiased. As a film, I thought Snowden was actually pretty well executed. Oliver Stone did a great job at balancing Edward's private life with his career which definitely made him more relatable as a character. I really appreciated the technical jargon, as a computer programmer I understood it all and felt like saying "Yes! I could easily become a hacker!". Alas, writing code in film is much easier than in reality...so my genius thoughts were shot down immediately. What really took me by surprise was the cast. ALOT of big names here that I wasn't expecting to see. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was perfect casting, took me a while to tune into his voice imitation of Snowden but I thought he was excellent. Rhys Ifans, Tom Wilkinson, Melissa Leo, Timothy Olyphant, Shailene Woodley (who's chemistry with Gordon-Levitt was slightly underdeveloped) and the one...the only...Nicolas Cage. Yes, stop what you are doing and gasp in revelatory excitement...Cagey boy, is in a good film. I thought the dramatic moments were tense, the plot was educational...all the elements for perfection were there. I just felt the structure was too basic and familiar. Nothing extraordinarily groundbreaking. It's a functional biopic and it succeeds in what it sets out to do. I couldn't help but think this was similar to The Fifth Estate...just better. Overall, an enjoyable basic biopic that addresses an important issue.