Enemies of the State

An all-American family? Or victims of a government conspiracy?

(2020) Documentary (IFC) Paul DeHart, Joel Widman, Christopher Clark, James Donahower, Leann DeHart, Lillian Tekle, Adrian Humphreys, Gabriela Coleman, Tor Ekeland, Ralph Nichols, Carrie Daughtrey. Directed by Sonia Kennebeck

 
We have come into an era where, as Leann DeHart puts it in this film, truth does not matter. We are all quick to believe what we’re going to believe anyway, whether informed through tribal affiliations or long-held beliefs. Either way, the truth never gets in the way of a good story.

On the surface, the DeHart family is one you’d find just about anywhere, USA. Father Paul is a pastor and ex-military; his wife Leann is also formerly in the military and their precocious son Matt was in the National Guard. Like many kids his age, he was into computers in a big way and his technical skills got him top secret clearance.

But Matt had grown to admire hacktivist groups like Anonymous and Wikileaks. His parents knew nothing about what he was up to until the FBI came knocking at their door with a warrant. Matt said that the government was out to keep him from whistleblowing about crimes and misdemeanors the government was routinely committing on US soil, and painted himself out to be cut in the mold of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

But the government insisted that wasn’t what was happening at all; Matt was accused of being a sexual predator and creating child porn. For Paul and Leann, this is absolutely preposterous and proof in their eyes that their son is telling the truth – the government is setting him up and using these heinous charges as a diversion. Matt further claims that the FBI is torturing him while in their custody. With nobody to turn to, and determined to keep Matt out of the hands of a government that they feel sure will kill their son once he is in custody, the DeHarts get in their car and drive to Canada where they apply for asylum.

This all sounds very convoluted – and it is – but then all the best mysteries are, aren’t they? Sonia Kennebeck’s second feature is very much set up like a Robert Ludlum spy thriller and relies heavily on dramatic recreations of certain events (in the case of the Canadian immigration hearing that the DeHarts were involved with, utilizing actual audio from the proceeding) and talking head interviews with family, friends, law enforcement and one journalist who is certainly on Team Matt.

But the final third of the movie has some jaw-dropping revelations in it. It’s just a shame the first two thirds of the film are so slow-moving that less disciplined viewers may give up on the film before they get to the good part, and the good part is definitely worth getting to. At times, Kennebeck seems to be delivering a screed about the state of the truth in an age where it is so easy to lie, and it takes a good while for us to get to that truth, but any journey that ends up at the truth is one well worth taking.

REASONS TO SEE: Has a bit of a Robert Ludlum-esque feel to it.
REASONS TO AVOID: Might be too densely packed, although it does improve in the last third.
FAMILY VALUES: There is adult thematic material.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Documentary filmmaker legend Erroll Morris is an executive producer on the film.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, DirecTV, Google Play, Microsoft, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/2/21: Rotten Tomatoes: 75% positive reviews; Metacritic: 74/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: We Steal Secrets
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: Never Gonna Snow Again

Snowden

Edward Snowden in the military.

(2016) Biographical Drama (Open Road) Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zachary Quinto, Melissa Leo, Shailene Woodley, Nicolas Cage, Rhys Ifans, Joely Richardson, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Olyphant, Scott Eastwood, Ben Chaplin, Lakeith Lee Stanfield, Nicholas Rowe, Bhasker Patel, Patrick Joseph Bymes, Christy Meyer, Robert Firth, Edward Snowden. Directed by Oliver Stone

 

Edward Snowden remains one of the most controversial figures of our time. There are those who label him a hero while others loathe him as a traitor. He polarizes opinion like nobody else and there are those on both sides of the political aisle that would like to see him answer for his crimes of revealing the NSA’s program of secret surveillance of the American people.

The movie has had a bit of a checkered history; it has been delayed at least twice, once to complete some of the special effects and the other to avoid competition from the major blockbusters. Once the film was released, it got almost zero support from its distributor and came and went from the theaters with little fanfare. Did it deserve that kind of fate?

Edward Snowden (Gordon-Levitt) is an idealistic young man whose ideals are somewhat conservative. He joins the military, wanting to serve his country but a badly broken leg puts an end to his military service. Instead, he’s recruited by the CIA to write code and serve his country in a different way. His mentor at the CIA, Corbin O’Brien (Ifans) takes a healthy interest in the young man’s career.

He also meets Lindsay Mills (Woodley), a free-spirited college student who supports herself through exotic dancing. The unlikely couple form a close bond and soon have a budding relationship, even though she’s as liberal as they come and he’s a staunch rock-ribbed conservative. He ends up writing programs that help root out terrorists and keep America safe.

Then, as he switches to the more lucrative consulting position at the NSA, he begins to discover some disturbing things. For example, the phone surveillance program he wrote is now targeting everybody and is gathering so much data the NSA has to build huge facilities to store it all. So despite having a beautiful home in Hawaii, a lucrative job and a bright future, he decides to blow the whistle on all this patently illegal material.

He sets up a meet with documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras (Leo) and journalist Glenn Greenwald (Quinto) in Hong Kong. He is clearly paranoid, expecting to be grabbed by NSA agents or the local police at any moment. But once Poitras and Greenwald have a chance to examine the documents, they realize they have the story of the century on their hands. It is just a matter of convincing their editors to allow them to tell it.

How you’re going to receive this film is going to depend an awful lot on how you view Edward Snowden. If you see him as a vile traitor giving state secrets to the media, then you’ll hate this movie. If you think he’s a heroic whistleblower who tried to put the brakes on what was clearly a morally heinous policy, you’re more likely to like this movie. Know going in that Stone is clearly in the latter camp and really doesn’t offer any sort of alternative viewpoint. It seemed to me that most reviews followed the political line; conservative movie critics tended to give it lower scores, more liberal critics higher ones.

So I’m trying to be as objective as I can, but it is difficult to filter out one’s own precepts. Gordon-Levitt I think does a very credible job as Snowden, capturing the cadences of his speech nicely although in a much deeper register than the real Snowden speaks in. Snowden is in many ways not the most charismatic of men so it’s hard to fault Gordon-Levitt for being a bit dry here, but he does seem to capture Snowden’s essential personality.

The rest of the cast is pretty strong – Ifans is virtually unrecognizable – but a lot of the big names are in for what are essentially cameos. Most of the film revolves around Snowden, Lindsey and the journalists. Basically, that’s enough to keep my interest.

I can understand some questioning that the movie makes Snowden to be something of a saint. I don’t think he is and I don’t think that he himself is above questioning by the filmmaker. Poitras, whose documentary on the events here CITIZENFOUR won an Oscar, painted a much more balanced picture of Snowden and in the process, made him more relatable. The Snowden here is a little bit less so because of that and I think it does the film a disservice to go that route.

There are some pretty good moments throughout the movie – Snowden’s initial meeting with the journalists, the events of his smuggling the data out of the NSA facility (a conjectural scene since Snowden has yet to and probably never will reveal how he actually did it) and the end scene when Snowden speaks to the TED conference via satellite – and Gordon-Levitt morphs into the real Edward Snowden, who gets the last word in the film fittingly enough.

It’s a well-made film – you would imagine Stone would at least produce that – but it’s more than just that. It gives us an opportunity to reflect on the state of things, whether the price of security is too high or whether liberty trumps that price. We’ve got a lot to think about as a society, much to demand from our leaders. Snowden reminds us that sometimes, doing the right thing isn’t doing the right thing.

REASONS TO GO: Gordon-Levitt really captures the cadences of Snowden’s speech. It has the taut atmosphere of a spy thriller.
REASONS TO STAY: The film lacks any counter-argument to make it seem more fair-minded.
FAMILY VALUES: There is a bit of foul language and some sexuality.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is Gordon-Levitt’s second straight film based on an Oscar-winning documentary; the first was The Walk which was the dramatic account of the documentary Man on Wire.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 10/14/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 63% positive reviews. Metacritic: 58/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: CITIZENFOUR
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: The Magnificent Seven (2016)