Nicolas Cage appears in Oliver Stone’s 2016 film Snowden…just barely. 

I tracked his screen time at roughly 5 minutes which barely counts in my opinion for a WATC(H) film. The role he plays with Hank Forrester, a CIA cryptologist and computer aficionado, has him appearing in just two scenes with the main character, Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and one scene (near the end of the film) where he is drinking beer and watching television. 

Cage is basically just a good supporting cameo in the film. It’s unfortunate, because the movie is quite engaging and probably one of the better films he’s appeared in for some time, but for our purposes it really doesn’t have a lot of meat on the bone for us to gnaw at or analyze in depth.

Snowden, which is based on actual events, details how Ed Snowden went from a promising government tech guru / hacker to an expatriated (translated exiled) whistle blower who leaked and exposed illegal U.S. policy and practices of tracking and monitoring its own citizens in the allegedly “fight against terrorism”. 

Forrester is a highly talented government pawn, the one who came before Snowden and created the computer program the government would later pervert and use to monitor its citizens. Forrester also is one of the very few moral / ethical CIA operatives Snowden comes across, but for his morality he is relegated to the basement of the CIA (initially “forgotten” but considered teaching, instructing, counseling new recruits) for having a conscience and wanting the government to do the right thing by its citizens. 

In many ways, Snowden becomes his protege (or at least his thought leader) as Snowden discovers what the government should be doing and ACTUALLY is doing. 

I’m not going to bother summarizing or analyzing this one because Nicolas Cage is pure JAG in this one. He is a good character, but barely touches the action at all. In our categorizations so far, he’s playing this one straight up, with no quirk or shamanistic inspirations. Cage can pretend to be a serviceable journeyman “normalish” actor whenever he needs to be. Thankfully, he doesn’t do so too often.

So we’ll consider this one a “holiday” post and call it quits for now, and just proceed with a few of the standard lists.

First for Nicolas Cage as Hank Forrester 

• Relegated to an office job for the entire film
• Wearing a sweater vest
• Drinking a Budweiser
• Wearing a U.S. flag pin on his lapel
• Loaning out his Rubic’s cubes to a protege

Recurrences

• Encrypting, decrypting and solving complex puzzles (National Treasure 1 & 2)
• Tech savvy with lots of gadgets (G-Force)
• In a U.S. government job and/or contract with the government (Guarding Tess, The Rock, The Runner)
• Taking on a protege (Matchstick Men, The Wizard’s Apprentice, Bangkok Dangerous)

Quotables

“Got a name? How do I know you’re not the enemy?”

“He did it. The kid did it!” 

“Top of my class. Like you.”

“Find the terrorist in the internet haystack.”

“Tides of history ticked with the rotors of this motor?”

“You would think intelligence would count for something in the intelligence business?”

“Sometimes the more you look the less you see.” 

“Military industrial happiness management.” 

Cheers until next time…