‘Winner’ Review: Susanna Fogel’s Jailed Whistleblower Biopic Is Frustratingly Glib
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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 Jones) 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.
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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 computer at work. The U.S. government decided to make an example of her, so she received the longest prison sentence ever imposed on an American citizen for leaking classified information to the media.
Previous projects, including the 2021 documentary “Reality Winner” and last year’s “Reality,” have focused on specific aspects of Winner’s life and case. “Winner” takes the long view, beginning in 2001 and going up to Winner’s release from prison in 2021. There’s a reason for this approach: “Winner” is invested in humanizing a figure who, for many, is little more than a weird name. And she is a fascinating, all-American character, a bleeding-heart vegan gun nut obsessed with CrossFit who taught herself Pashto in high school and kept those close to her at a distance while devoting her life to the well-being of strangers.
The Reality Winner we meet in this film is quick-witted, sarcastic, brutally honest, and thoroughly convinced of her own righteousness — a portrayal that’s based on co-writer Kerry Howley’s interviews with Winner, both for this film and the article upon which it was based. Her personality meshes with Fogel’s style, as the director is also irreverent in a “well behaved women seldom make history” type of way. With that in mind, even though the film is exhausting from the jump — it opens, seemingly without any sense of irony, with a “You Might Be Wondering How I Got Here” monologue — it’s also sincere, in the way that a teenager who’s passionate about a topic they just learned about yesterday is sincere.
“Winner” isn’t totally deferential to its subject. There are scenes where we see (or, rather, characters state) how “Re’s” stubborn virtue can be hurtful to her family and to her sweet vet-student boyfriend (Danny Ramirez). But the filmmaker’s admiration for her protagonist gives her the same blind spots, glossing over these conflicts as well as the subtleties of the decision-making that led Winner to print and smuggle out an especially juicy classified document from her NSA job in the waistband of her pantyhose. “Winner” sees this as an act of uncomplicated heroism — and it might be. But the psychology of why Reality Winner was headstrong enough to “tell the truth” where others were not is more complicated (and interesting) than this film cares to explore.
The closest the movie comes to truly illuminating Winner’s personality is through her relationship with her dad Ronald (Zach Galifinakis), a frustrated intellectual rotting away in small-town Texas who raised his daughter to question authority and encouraged her to stay loyal to her principles. Galifinakis’ wounded, tragicomic performance is a standout, and the scenes between him and Jones allow the latter to finally unclench her shoulders. (Jones’ primary performance beat in this film is upright tension, a reflection of her character’s intense self-discipline.)
Later on in the film, Re’s mom Billie (Connie Britton) and sister Brittany (Kathryn Newton) move to the front of the narrative. Here, too, the humanity of the characters becomes inconvenient, sidelined in favor of pop-feminist crowd pleasing. If it hurt either of them to be there for Re when she needed them, that pain is not what Fogel wants you to remember when the credits roll and the inevitable photos of the real people flash across the screen. She wants you to feel good about watching this movie, as if simply consuming a piece of media makes you a truth-teller like Reality Winner. Unfortunately, however, reality — the person, and the concept — isn’t that simple.
Grade: C
“Winner” premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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