Throughout the film, nearly every exchange of dialogue sounds like sparring blocks of Wikipedia-like information.
The film’s understanding of the brittleness that begets the “traditions” of frat culture is altogether shallow.
It depicts Snowden’s ethical dilemmas in a political vacuum that disregards America’s complex security threats.
The film is a refreshing and overdue exposure of the violence that white male privilege breeds and needs to reassert itself.
The film the tough true story has spawned is as formulaically cheery, didactically “uplifting,” and fundamentally false as a Disney sports movie.
Books themselves become the story’s key symbol, representing the past and future, loss and possibility, of a place that’s ground zero for some of history’s darkest days.