'Citizenfour' review: A portrait of Edward Snowden

For most of us, Laura Poitras' "Citizenfour" is the closest we'll come to spending two hours in a room with Edward Snowden, a contractor for the National Security Agency who leaked classified documents showing that our government was routinely spying on citizens while publicly denying doing so. Though the movie offers little new information, it's a fascinating, minute-by-minute report from inside the Snowden bunker while his revelations make headlines around the world in June 2013. "Citizenfour" shows, in real time, the transformation of a boyish-looking 29-year-old into a wanted man.

It's not an unbiased portrait. Poitras, who was repeatedly detained and interrogated at airports after the 2005 release of her Iraq documentary, "My Country, My Country," clearly wants to show the dangers of indiscriminate surveillance and government overreach. Snowden knew this about her, which is why he first approached her in January 2013. Poitras filmed Snowden in the Hong Kong hotel room that served as his safe-house until he decided to flee and go underground.

Snowden comes off as principled, serious and a highly strategic thinker. Any other computer whiz might have simply data-dumped his documents onto WikiLeaks, but Snowden relied on a few trusted journalists -- most notably the crusading freelancer Glenn Greenwald -- to cherry-pick information for maximum news value. That, plus his well-managed public image (anonymous hacker at first, then self-sacrificing whistle-blower), shows a sophisticated grasp of the media and its voracious cycles.

Poitras' film suffers slightly from a lack of context. She doesn't interview anyone connected to Snowden, though that might have been by agreement; he insists that she "paint the target directly on my back" to spare loved ones from guilt by association. The film also gives short shrift to what remains a worthwhile debate about privacy rights in an age of international and homegrown terrorism.

"Citizenfour" drives home what Snowden, now 31, sacrificed for his decision. We last see him cooking dinner with his girlfriend in an apartment in Moscow, where he applied for asylum. They're visible only from a distance in a shot that looks, ironically, like surveillance.