Entertainment

This 'Snowden' Clip'll Make You Ship A New Couple

by S. Atkinson

Surprisingly, The most striking take away after watching the new Snowden clip isn't, actually, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's eerily accurate rendition of Edward Snowden's voice, but instead the serious chemistry between Snowden stars Shailene Woodley and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Like, make sure you don't singe your eyeballs, because this scene is pretty calienté for a clip that purports to be about two earnest students discussing how reliable or unreliable the liberal media is, and the point of peaceful protest. While this could have been a worthy biopic about an NSA whistleblower that you probably owed it to democracy to go see, the two leads' repartee suggests it's going to be a whole lot more than the (admittedly important) subject matter might imply.

If you hadn't already assumed the obvious, Woodley plays Lindsay Mills in the film, Snowden's girlfriend, while Gordon-Levitt portrays Snowden himself. Yes, it's just a short clip, but the duo manages to make what could have been a pretty dry conversation about a protest not just watchable, but relatable: I found myself agreeing with both Woodley and Gordon-Levitt's character's respective arguments that peaceful protest is what America's founded on vs. the need to be cautious about putting too much trust in a media narrative. It takes a lot of chemistry to suck a viewer into a clip like that, and clearly, this couple has it.

So, will Woodley and Gordon-Levitt become the next consistent on-screen duo, like Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper have become? It's a bit too early to tell, but I'm gonna go ahead an answer with a hard more than possible on this one. It'll likel become apparent as more footage from the film is released, and viewers see more of Woodley and Gordon-Levitt totally killing it at their roles.

Images: Open Road Films