Oliver Stone
Snowden

Once again, Mr William Oliver Stone surprises us, but not too much, by presenting a "biographical" film against the system, focusing on the last days of Mr Edward Joseph Snowden, before going into hiding far from the clutches of the States and the NSA – the National Security Agency, which is the government body of the USA that, together with CIA and the FBI, deals with national security (and not only in my opinion...).

In the cast, we see one of my favorite actors appearing only three times (almost a cameo), whom I hadn't seen for over ten years (my bad, okay?), and it is the good old Mr Nicolas Kim Coppola better known as Nicolas Cage, nephew of Mr Francis Ford Coppola, playing an uh, stubborn computer guy whose administration took an idea from him and, after his complaints, dethroned him from his duties, relegating him to teaching still within the intelligence apparatus. I don't see any other well-known actors unless we consider famous Mr Scott Clinton Reeves (on sets for about ten years), son of Mr Clint Eastwood.

I'm not going to delve into the plot, but the theme of the film reminds me that even in the '70s there was a slogan sometimes chanted in protests against the system and which Eugenio Finardi sang link that "the C.I.A. spies on us”(and frankly, nowadays we'd be naive not to believe that we are watched almost 24/7, and that for those who monitor us, we have very few secrets or maybe none at all), in short, OS takes inspiration from a couple of books to shoot this film about a man who decides to reveal to journalists what he knows about the fact that the USA government controls everything that is said/written in personal emails or via cell phones, etc. by anyone in the world, denying doing so and admitting the opposite until proven otherwise, and that proof is provided by Edward Snowden, tired of this abuse against the freedom and privacy of citizens by the established power, obviously endangering his own existence to the point of being forced to become a bird of the forest and find temporary refuge in Russia.

During the two-hour viewing, we remain glued cheering for Snowden and we don't realize the time passing (I don't even know why I use the plural, but that's that).

And finally, from the little I have read (and that is on good old Wikipedia) it seems that: According to some leaks from the U.S. intelligence, Russian President Putin might be considering handing over Snowden to the newly elected President Donald Trump, for a relaxation of relations between Washington and Moscow, despite the fact that on January 18, 2017, his residence permit in Russia was renewed until 2020, the year in which he could apply for Russian citizenship.