Hey Yo, Draven here.
The Edward Snowden saga continues to unfold almost a year after he first began releasing confidential NSA documents. Just last week, he gave an interview to Brian Williams that seems to have added fuel to a dying fire. Whether you think he is a patriot or a traitor is irrelevant, because people are talking about him and continue to do so. So of course Hollywood has to get in on this and who better to write and direct a film that will keep people talking than Oliver Stone?
Yes, the Guardian broke the news that the controversial filmmaker will be tackling a film adaptation of THE SNOWDEN FILES, which was written by the Guardian’s own, Luke Harding.
The report also points out that a competing project chronicling the Snowden saga has already been set up titled, NO PLACE TO HIDE which is to be adapted from the book written by Glenn Greenwald. So, it will be a race to get the project done in a timely fashion as was Stone’s 9/11 film, WORLD TRADE CENTER as it was in production around the same time as UNITED 93.
Hopefully, this turns into a more interesting film than WORLD TRADE CENTER or any of his last few films, and that this is the spark Stone needs to get his career back on track.He had some controversial quotes last year where he described Snowden as a hero and seemed to really be passionate about it. If he can bring a little bit of the fire he displayed with these quotes than I think the film will at least be interesting:
"It's a disgrace that Obama is more concerned with hunting down Snowden than reforming these George Bush-style eavesdropping techniques. To me Snowden is a hero because he revealed secrets that we should all know, that the United States has repeatedly violated the fourth amendment. He should be welcomed and offered asylum. But he has no place to hide because every country is intimidated by the United States."
To be fair, I really thought he was going to bring some of that fire and passion with W. While some of the performances (Josh Brolin particularly) were great (and other laughably bad) the movie seemed to really be missing a compelling narrative and was pretty boring. Which even in failure Stone had not been up to that point and was unimaginable when the project was announced. He then disappointed again with WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS (which had an awesome trailer) and I didn’t even bother seeing SAVAGES with the terrible word of mouth it got.
Again though, I am hopeful that THE SNOWDEN FILES will be a return to form for Stone, and that the last decade of his career won’t be our last memory of his filmography. He needs to take the time to get it right, not rush it into production before the script is ready, and show us that the filmmaker who made TALK RADIO, BORN ON THE 4th OF JULY, PLATOON, NIXON, JFK, and NATURAL BORN KILLERS among others, is still there.
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