Edward Snowden Movie Trailer: First Look at Joseph Gordon-Levitt as NSA Whistleblower

Oscar-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone will release his latest film, Snowden, in just a few weeks starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, and the first full trailer for the movie has finally arrived. Could this be the film that lands Gordon-Levitt his own Academy Award?

After months of silence from producing company Open Road Films, the first full trailer for the biopic is finally here, and the work Gordon-Levitt did just to recreate Snowden's voice is impressive to say the least. Still, the first responses to the actor's voice acting aren't very positive, with Inverse calling it "ridiculous" and The Huffington Post declaring it "the unfortunate star" of the film's trailer.

Still, we get a first glimpse of the story, which will cover at least Snowden's first attempts at serving his country, including the military training he had to halt after breaking both legs. We're shown how he later began work with the CIA, where he discovered the government was tracking phone calls from its citizens, which prompted him to go through a wave of paranoia and ultimately leak documents.

Snowden, who has been living in Russia since 2014 under asylum, is one of the most controversial figures of recent times, with some he's a hero for putting the NSA's practice out in the open, while others call him a traitor. Last year, the documentary Citizenfour, based on a series of interviews to him, won the Oscar for Best Documentary, Feature.

Snowden will be the first major attempt to produce a fictionalized account of Snowden's story. According to Variety, the movie was originally scheduled for a late 2015 release and has already been pushed back twice.

Aside from Gordon-Levitt, the film also stars Scot Eastwood, Shailene Woodley, Nicolas Cage, Timothy Olyphant, Rhys Ifans, Zachary Quinto, Melissa Leo and Tom Wilkinson. Besides directing, Stone also co-wrote the screenplay with Kieran Fitzgerald based on two books about the whistleblower: The Snowden Files by Luke Harding and Time of the Octopus by Anatoly Kucherena.

Snowden will hit theaters on September 16.