I’ve had mixed feelings about Snowden himself. Watching the film was one way to learn more.

Sorry to say I ended up not much more enlightened. You can call him a a hero, a whistleblower, a dissident, a traitor and a patriot. All true. Certainly he’s a criminal.

I’d like to think I would have done the same thing … in his position.

His girlfriend Lindsay Mills is a much more interesting character. She’s an acrobat.

Snowden’s “breaking point” was “seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, lie under oath to Congress”. That’s shown in the film. Initially hopeful that Obama would improve things, ultimately he gave up on him.

Snowden was right, of course.

N.S.A. Collection of Bulk Call Data Is Ruled Illegal

Trump’s pick for CIA director has called for Snowden’s execution.

I’ve been following Glenn Greenwald over the past couple of years. He’s smart. But accurately depicted in the film as a jerk.

In the movie Snowden smuggles the classified information hidden in a tile in his Rubik’s cube. That may not be how he did it.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Snowden is a 2016 German-American biographical political thriller film directed by Oliver Stone and written by Stone and Kieran Fitzgerald, based on the books The Snowden Files by Luke Harding and Time of the Octopus by Anatoly Kucherena. …

For his role as Snowden, Joseph Gordon-Levitt pledged to donate his entire salary from the film to “help facilitate the conversation” about the relationship between technology and democracy  …

Due to fear of interference by the National Security Agency, Stone decided to shoot the film mostly outside of the United States …

Snowden received mixed reviews from critics, but Gordon-Levitt’s performance garnered critical praise. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 61%