'Snowden': Oliver Stone's Most Important Film

By Robert Wenzel

"Snowden" would be an important film for no other reason than it has given us a great new term, "Military-Industrial Happiness" (well, technically in the film it's "military-industrial happiness management") to explain budget-busting military contracts. And as a bonus in the film, the term is delivered to us by Nicholas Cage!

But Oliver Stone's new film goes way beyond that. His film "JFK" was significant in solidifying with the masses the theory that there was a plot to kill JFK that went well beyond Lee Harvey Oswald.

Stone's message in "Snowden" is even more important. And it is masterfully done. The film holds your attention the way a good drama should but in addition reveals the true nature of the surveillance state and its true scope. (Maybe those of you who attempt to post comments here and at other websites where you write that this or that politician should be wiped out--that I delete for you when you do it here-- will think twice about doing so after seeing this film.)

I am glad that Stone also included in the film Snowden's warning that the surveillance state is a "turnkey operation for tyranny." It is and people need to be reminded of this over and over again.

But the major point that Stone delivers is just how encompassing the surveillance state is, and he does it with what could almost be called simple dramatic examples. This is great stuff. It is a must see film.

There are also some frightening scenes showing just how the CIA uses its intel. This is not something you want to be turnkey.

One note: You are going to see negative reviews on this film. There is already one up at the New York Post: Oliver Stone bombs again with his true-life spy tale ‘Snowden’

It is a typical attack operation from the tools of the deep state.

The same thing occurred when "JFK" first came out. Murray Rothbard wrote back then:

The most fascinating thing about JFK, as exciting and well-done as it is, is not the movie itself but the hysterical attempt to marginalize, if not to suppress it. How many movies can you remember where the entire Establishment, in serried ranks, from left (The Nation) through Center to Right, joined together as one in a frantic orgy of calumny and denunciation. Time and Newsweek actually doing so before the movie came out? Apparently, so fearful was the Establishment that the Oliver Stone movie might prove convincing that the public had to be thoroughly inoculated in advance. It was a remarkable performance by the media, and it demonstrates, as nothing else, the enormous and growing gap between Respectable Media opinion and what the public Knows in its Heart.

You would think from the shock of the Respectable Media, that Stone’s JFK was totally outlandish, off-the-wall, monstrous and fanciful in its accusations against the American power structure.

One minor complaint: There is one sloppy point in the script of the movie. It's the kind that drives me crazy. When Snowden is leaving his office with the material he has downloaded, he leaves early and tells a co-worker that he is not feeling well. The co-worker tells him that maybe he should take the next day off as well. Then as Snowden goes past a security guard, the security guard tells him to have a nice weekend.

Come on guys. This is a multi-million dollar major release. Can't you get a detail guy with a fresh pair of eyes to watch the film to pick this stuff up?

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of  EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. He also writes EPJ Daily Alert and is author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn.