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    Edward Snowden (left) with Glenn Greenwald in Citizenfour.  Depending on your point of view, Edward Snowden is either a dangerous traitor or a laudable hero. It’s that split that makes the 31-year-old former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor a compelling – and increasingly popular – cinematic figure. That popularity is demonstrated by the critical reception accorded documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras’ Citizenfour, and the anticipation surrounding Snowden, the new Oliver Stone drama that has begun production in Europe with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the title role and Zachary Quinto as muckraking journalist Glenn Greenwald. How Snowden’s decision to leak scores of documents about American surveillance should be interpreted is a key moral mystery of the national security debate and hardly a clear matter even for some of those telling his story. “I’m endlessly fascinated by Snowden’s decision, his process, his motivation,” says Quinto. “The vast majority of accounts had it one way or another – he’s either one more traitor or a righteous whistleblower. And the question is, ‘Which one is it?’ Or maybe it’s something more complicated than that.” Contemporary news figures in the Snowden vein can make for weak cinematic sauce (the 2013 Julian Assange movie The Fifth Estate is a case in point). But Snowden is proving resistant to the rule. Citizenfour, in which Poitras offers an intimate look at Snowden and Greenwald in the Hong Kong hotel room where the documents were leaked, won this year’s Oscar for best documentary. Sony, meanwhile, has bought the rights to Greenwald’s book No Place to Hide in the hope of making its own movie, and has set James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli for the project, though whether it still moves forward in the wake of Stone’s take is an open question. Stone’s Snowden – which is backed by a […]