director: Oliver Stone
starring: Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, Richard Dreyfuss, James Cromwell, Jeffrey Wright, Thandie Newton, Ellen Burstyn, Scott Glenn
No matter your opinion of our current president, it’s clear George W. Bush has been one of the most polarizing figures of the last fifty years and will be talked about in the history books decades from now for the impact he’s had on the United States and the world during his presidency. Whether that turns out to be positive or negative remains to be seen, despite how strongly you may feel one way or the other. Thus, it doesn’t seem too outlandish for a biopic on the man while he’s still President and still very much in his prime years. He’s a fascinating figure that bears analysis, and who better (or worse) to do that than Oliver Stone?
I’ve always found Stone’s films to be compelling, even if they’re a mess (Any Given Sunday is a good example). More often than not, though, he covers topics important in a societal sense, from the horrors of war in Platoon to the amoral exploitations of the media in Natural Born Killers. In any case, there’s an inherent bias in his point-of-view, as I’m sure we all have, but he typically avoids subtlety in making sure the audience knows what his views are on a given subject, whether that there was a government conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy (JFK), or that the majority of pro athletes are hopelessly egotistical drug addicts (Any Given Sunday). The point is, don’t expect to get a completely objective film on a given subject from Oliver Stone.