Oliver Stone is still fighting the good fight in "Snowden".
It's become popular to knock filmmaker Oliver Stone for some of his conspiratorial beliefs and cinematic excesses, but his latest film "Snowden" is a very measured and precise work. It may not have the go-for-broke oomph of "JKF" or "Natural Born Killers", but it's clever, well-acted, and about as topical as films come these days. Was Edward Snowden (a slow-burning Joseph Gordon-Levitt) a patriotic whistleblower exposing our nation's dirtiest spying secrets? And does America even care about their government spying on them today? He puts these issues out front and center in a well-constructed story that dutifully honors the tropes of Main Character, Dynamic Character and Opponent, the three-character triad of screenwriting. Stone's latest also gives audiences a lot to think about and discuss afterwards. You can argue about Snowden's actions, but you cannot argue with that.