Review of Snowden (2016) by Axet — 18 Sep 2016

The best of Oliver Stone is hard hitting, intense, edgy, and controversial. That was then. This is now: soft edged, melodramatic, predictable, harmonious. Whatever you think of Stone, he is a giant of cinema and his voice so strong he created a brand of identity and signature subject matter which very few big movie directors ever achieve. Give him the credit for tackling tough content nobody else would touch and executing with big class A production value and a zesty vigor which pushed the whole medium in his heyday. Big fan here.

Like last week's "Sully" the biggest problem with this movie is we pretty much know the story and what happened, yet "All The President's Men" and countless other political true stories have been made sometimes to great success despite their well known outcomes.

When I saw the trailer for this, I thought it a natural subject for Stone. Unfortunately this doesn't come off as much as a suspenseful thriller as it does a human drama and at that the protagonist is too opaque to care much for him and therefore the emotion is forced and low. This is a sweeping full spectrum epic treatment which I tend to prefer generally, however in this case I think taking more of a particular angle and only telling part of the story could have been more impactful. It drags after a while in its sheer predictability.

It's too simplistic in its argument, when in fact his controversial actions are a much more complex picture. It's easy to only call out the abuses while leaving out all the saves the government does for us.

On a minor aesthetic note: the date/location titles are too large, and hopefully not a new trend. They're less elegant and require more scan of your eyes across the frame (thus missing more of the visual itself) than traditional smaller lower third titles, and will not make a difference in readability on video.

The very best from Oliver Stone: "JFK" (10), "Born on the Fourth of July" (10), "Platoon" (9), "Nixon" (9), "The Doors" (9); and don't forget he wrote without also directing the classics: "Midnight Express" (10) and "Scarface" (9), as well as a personal favorite "8 Million Ways to Die" (9) "Talk Radio" was prescient and enthralling at the time (9), and "U-Turn" was one hell of a wild deranged southwestern film noir (8).