Every Oliver Stone Movie Ranked Worst To Best
11. Snowden
Oliver Stone's most recent release as of 2020 once again homes in on a real life figure. Edward Snowden has made waves in the United States for much of the last decade for blowing the whistle on government-approved surveillance across the nation. He has since fled to Russia to seek asylum.
Some call him a traitor, others a hero who exposed corruption in US leadership. Such a timely and contemporary topic has laid the groundwork for several works of media. Documentaries and smaller scale productions have proven somewhat successful, but Oliver Stone's "Snowden" went for a more big budget approach when it arrived in 2016.
Snowden chronicles the titular operative's (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) crucial meeting with journalists Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald. From here, we follow the revelations that occured contrasted against the protaganist's past. The film's strengths lie in its deeply political undertones, which generates a thought-provoking look at real life events.
With that said, its position as a larger scale Hollywood film means it had to take some liberties with what had happened. As a result, things feel a tad watered down, especially when compared to the far superior CitizenFour. Stone clearly wanted to tell the story well, but other books and documentaries have done it better.