4 Star

The Eyes, The Ears and the NSA.

Controversial directer/producer Oliver Stone (Natural Born Killers, JFK, Platoon, World Trade Center) brings us another event that changed how we view those who are there to serve and protect us from those that would harm us.

A lowly lit hotel room in Hong Kong, 2013 and three people meet, Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo, London Has Fallen), Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto, Star Trek, Star Trek Into the Darkness, Star Trek Beyond) and Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Looper, Inception, The Dark Knight Rises). The World is about to see in on itself.

A young Edward Snowden; it is 2004 and he wants to serve his country in the Special Forces but due to the stresses of the training he suffers from stress fractures in his legs and is rendered unable to continue training, but his physician tells him there are other ways to serve his country.

He takes a test to join the CIA with Corbin O’Brian (Rhys Ifans, Notting Hill, Mr Nobody) and doesn’t quite hit the mark but these are strange times and after 9/11 computer nerds are needed more than ever.

He is sent to ‘The Hill’ in Virginia, the CIA training centre, where he and his fellow trainees are given an eight hour task that only takes Snowden thirty eight minutes to complete. Corbin is impressed with his problem solving. He also meets Hank Forrester (Nicholas Cage, Vengence: A Love Story, The Trust, Pay the Ghost) a cryptographer and his collection of historical spy machines.

He finally gets to meet the girl at the end of the dating site he has been communicating with since his special forces days, Lindsay Mills (Shailene Woodley, Divergent) a girl with liberal views, unlike Edwards conservative views. They hit it off and become an item and she follows him when he is sent to Geneva. He is handled by a CIA operative (Timothy Olyphant, Hitman, Die Hard 4.0).

In the next six years he learns a lot about surveillance and the methods used by government agencies to keep its citizens safe and free, until he ends up in a hotel room in Hong Kong.

“Everybody has something to hide!”

“What do you have to hide?”

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