### Snowden 2016 % 282016 % 29 Biography , Drama , Thriller Jaymes Butler , Jamal Alkhaldi , Steffen Anton , Denese Basile Director Oliver StoneIMDb rating Unknown awaiting five votes SNOWDEN stars Joseph GordonLevitt and is written and directed by Oliver Stone . The script is based on the books The Snowden Files The Inside Story of the World ' s Most Wanted Man by Luke Harding and Time of the Octopus by Anatoly Kucherena . IMDbCritical reception Snowden received mixed reviews from critics , but GordonLevitt ' s performance garnered critical praise . On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , the film has an approval rating of 63 %, based on 180 reviews , with an average rating of 6 . 410 . The site ' s critical consensus reads , Snowden boasts a thrilling factbased tale and a solid lead performance from Joseph GordonLevitt , but director Oliver Stone plays it perplexingly safe , sapping the story of its impact . On Metacritic , the film has a normalized rating of 58 out of 100 , based on 41 critics , indicating mixed or average reviews . Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average A grade , on an A to F scale . WikipediaMore info at % 282016 % 29 , Snowden % 20 % 28 film % 29 , Rotten Tomatoes , , . I am a bot . Send me feedback % 2 Fr % 2 FMovieGuidesubjectRe % 3 A % 20 Confidence 1 . 00 . Data sources and other i n f ormationrMovieGuidewabout .