Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Edward Snowden in latest Oliver Stone film
The Oliver Stone film about NSA leaker Edward Snowden is finally hitting cinemas in September of this year after a couple of delays. But before moviegoers get the real deal, film studio Open Road released a new trailer.
The story revolves around Snowden, who will be played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and his story after releasing to the public secret NSA documents, which would later be known as "The Snowden Files." Stone directed the film and co-wrote the screenplay.
The film isn't really a direct account of Snowden's life after the leak, but more of a re-telling of two books about him. Therefore, it is more of a film adaptation of Luke Harding's "The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man" and "Time of the Octopus" by Anatoly Kucherena, who had first-hand information about Snowden's experience because he represented him as a lawyer.
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While the work of Kucherena was a novel (book), Harding's book was more factual since everything written inside it talked about the stuff Snowden admitted to The Guardian. The film is produced by familiar names who worked with Stone in the past, more particularly Moritz Borman.
The trailer shows Snowden (Gordon-Levitt) in his training days with the army. However, he failed to make a career out of it after getting a leg injury, where he eventually was discharged. He began working for the NSA in what is referred to in the film as a "secret project," wherein he found out that the agency was scouring through private communications from civilians, including mobile phones, emails, and texts, for information.
Realizing that the very nature of his job was completely wrong and beyond the bounds of government privilege, he decided to come out and let the public know about it. However, he has with him data obtained from the job that the government is looking for. Part of the film tackles those tense moments of hiding from the long reach of the U.S. government while also trying to seek out his own freedom.
The film also stars Shailene Woodley, Nicolas Cage, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Timothy Olyphant, Tom Wilkinson, Scott Eastwood, Joely Richardson, and Rhys Ifans.
