Towards the end of Susanna Fogel’s frustratingly glib biopic “Winner,” a sassy bit of voiceover notes that, although the leaking of said information had life-changing consequences for the person who released it, the actual revelation that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election didn’t make much of an impact. The report was published, some pundits were smug about it, and everyone moved on. Similarly, the film makes a cute visual joke — a feed scrolls down the screen, combining serious news and lifestyle puff pieces into a numbing firehose of information — and gets back to business.
But — to crib the know-it-all tone of Fogel’s film — here’s the thing: the remaining 102 minutes and change of “Winner” celebrate the ideas of standing for truth, acting on your values, and really doing something that will change the world for the better. If the realization that her plan was ultimately useless destroyed the idealism that motivated Reality Winner (Emilia Clarke) to leak that document in the first place, Fogel’s film doesn’t dig into that. It’s too busy whipping up a rah-rah #resistance message to explore the more ambiguous elements of Winner’s story.
This is the third film to be produced about Winner, an Air Force veteran and military contractor who was arrested and charged under the Espionage Act after she printed out a top-secret document on an NSA office printer in June 2017 and mailed it to “The Intercept” — a website she sometimes read on her...
Top Headlines India has firmly rejected China's attempts to rename locations in Indian territory, as Beijing establishes a new county in Xinjiang near Arunachal Pradesh, Ladakh, and Pakistan-occupi...