Snowden is a biopic about a man of great courage with none of its own. Opting to tell the story of the globally-recognized NSA agent turned whistleblower, writer-director Oliver Stone and co-writer Kieran Fitzgerald craft a narrative akin to a fan fiction version of Snowden’s Wikipedia page – except one should expect more nuance and knowledge from the latter – complete with unnecessary sex scenes, dramatically empty melodrama and, per Stone’s contract, loose-lipped partisan pandering.

Throughout the ages, Oliver Stone has taken it upon himself to act as the self-appointed historical diplomat of the film world, adapting current events to narrative form to widely varying effect. His films run the gamut from excellent (Platoon) to exploitative (World Trade Center) to excruciating (Alexander) and if there’s one thing that has defined his career it’s an uncanny ability to jump into a story that’s still in development. That is, he’s always there a bit “too soon”. His latest endeavor sees the New York native taking on a headline event of no short stature: Edward Snowden’s leaking of classified documents detailing the United States government’s global surveillance efforts, including the mass proliferation of wiretapping its own citizens.

The ink is far from dry on the subject – this all happened in 2013 – so there’s no lingering doubts going in that yes, Stone has again struck too soon. Like with W. – which Stone released during the final year of Bush Jr.’s presidency – Snowden’s story has not been given the ample amount of simmer time. Stone’s hurriedly-produced film feels all the more sludgy and undigested for it. Take for instance the fact that Edward Snowden is still deeply embroiled in a Trump-sized wall of legal hoopla. Federal top dogs still have their proverbial panties in a bunch about the whole leak incident and have wanted to try him for violation of the Espionage Act for years, an offense which terrifyingly equates to potentially executable treason. More recently, Snowden has launched an unlikely-but-just-could-be-effective viral plea for a presidential pardon. The dust is still so far from settling on the issue that one might find it caught in the camera in front of Stone’s otherwise uber-sleek and hacker-friendly sets.

Conversation surrounding the popular view of the turncoat computer specialist is still hotly debated, with some believing him a modern day hero, others a regular Benedict Arnold. Stone firmly believes the former and that’s all well and good were he able to do so convincingly. Instead, he is a disreputable source in that he a) seems uninterested in exploring the underlying complexity of the issue and b) sees no need to do so. The issue remains his inability to articulate the deep-seated nuances of the issues at play and to give any credence to the other side of the aisle along the way.

When we meet Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) he’s just joined up with the Army Special Forces. JGL plays him like a boy scout with a stiff upper-lip and a hippocampus as overdeveloped as his love of country. That’s not a bad thing per se – again, Snowden is as complicated a subject as his “act of treason” and Gordon-Levitt does all that Stone asks of him, including nailing Ed’s monotone drawl, and more. The film rests on Gordon-Levitt’s shoulders and insomuch as the performer does all he can, there’s still no excusing Snowden‘s blaring macro-issues.

In an “only in an Oliver Stone movie” movie, this child of 9/11’s patriotism is so robust that he literally breaks both legs in boot camp because of his relatively small frame and heavy pack. That Snowden’s origin story mimics that of Steve Rogers is accidental if pretty darn hilarious. That Stone accompanies such with Craig Armstrong’s dutifully reverential score (a score with oppressively self-serious names like “Burden of Truth”) is evidence of his ridiculously overblown dramatic tendencies taking early shape. When the doctor informs the hospital bed-ridden young man that his bones will turn to dust if he keeps it up (exaggeration much?) the self-educated Snowden turns to the world of computers to save the day.

Here the Snowden we know begins to take shape as Snowden The Movie sets out to derail itself quickly and ably. It takes little more than a hacking montage that sees Snowden ace the hours-long aptitude exam in just 38-minutes and we’re off to the races. Snowden’s ascension within the digital intelligence world is accompanied by the ramping up of Snowden’s long-term relationship with Lindsay Mills (played half-decently by a Shailene Woodley badly in need of a victory). Their on-again-off-again relationship ultimately offers naught but a shaky human backbone to ground Stone’s robotic storytelling and makes for some of the film’s most confounding examples of Stone skirting the Real Issues. Just as he seems ready to take on the complex challenges that accompany telling Snowden’s story, he pivots. Eddie has seizures! Lindsay and him are in a fight! Jealousy issues! The dramatic softballs come fast and loose and we’re stuck getting pummeled by them in Stone’s batting cage.

An impressive cast includes Zachary Quinto and Tom Wilkinson as Guardian reporters Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, Rhys Ifans as sketchy politico Corbin O’Brian, Nicolas Cage as a moral (but deadbeat) instructor and a seriously-dressed down Melissa Leo as Oscar-winning Citizenfour documentarian Laura Poitras (I don’t know what Stone has against Poitras but he really got Melissa Leo nice and haggard to look the part. Perhaps it’s the fact that Citizenfour is ten times the film that Snowden is?). None add much aside from Prestige with a capital P to the picture as they don’t ever have much to do outside of Ifans’ O’Brian turning into an insanely on-the-nose Big Brother stand-in in the final act.

Anyone going into a Stone picture already knows the man is a regular Andrea Bocelli of preaching to the choir but, even moreso than normal, Stone fails to massage his one-dimensional liberal ideologies into something of actual substantive worth. Time and again, Stone fails to find a way to portray Snowden’s complexity without resorting to tired tropes and lazy screenwriting. Instead of offering an impassioned justification for why we all OUGHT TO CARE A WHOLE HECK OF A LOT, Stone throws in his hat.

Take the events following Snowden’s first posting in Sweden. He’s deeply disillusioned after a morally iffy mission with a dubious CIA agent (Timothy Olymphant handsomely mugging for the camera) and resigns. With Bush shipping out as commander-in-chief, Snowden assumes that Obama’s rising star may signal a turning in the domestic surveillance tides and reenlists. Cue the oh-so-familiar voice-over: “I thought that under Obama things would get better,” Snowden teases. “They only got worse…” Rather than getting into the how or why or what this means for us Ordinary Citizens, Stone leaves things there. Fundamentally failing to realize that the meaning is in the ellipses themselves. If you’re going to tell a story about one of the most controversial characters in the world, at least allow your support some backbone. Fill in the ellipses. Give them meaning. Rather Stone just lets them hang there like spoiled meat rotting on rusty hooks and we’re left none the wiser for it.

CONCLUSION: Stodgy and listless, ‘Snowden’ represents a top-to-bottom failure to give meaningful material narrative purpose. Loaded with weakly motivated characters and a very cursory understanding of political tectonics, Oliver Stone’s latest attempt to sensationalize modern headlines fails to bring anything new to the table and comes across as exploitative and weak. Did I mention it’s also boring?