Film Review – Winner

Producers love to finance movies about whistleblowers, especially over the last decade or so, focusing on digital leakers looking to expose corruption. We’ve dealt with “Snowden” and “The Fifth Estate,” watching noble filmmakers try to make sense of delicate political and personal situations. Audiences certainly don’t care, but now comes “Winner,” which is actually the second feature made about the tale of Reality Winner (third if you count the 2021 documentary, “The United States vs. Reality Winner”), an NSA agent who decided to poke around evidence confirming Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, eventually sharing it with the media. In 2023, there was “Reality,” a little-seen picture starring Sydney Sweeney, and now “Winner,” which endeavors to explore the same story with a larger scope. Director Susanna Fogel (“The Spy Who Dumped Me”) and screenwriter Kerry Howley look to get a little closer to Winner and her woes, but even with spy games and family issues, the material ends up a flat understanding of the subject’s life and choices. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com