Just in time for America’s birthday, a teaser trailer for Oliver Stone’s Snowden has premiered on iTunes.
There’s not a whole heck of a lot to the preview: Images of the stars and stripes fade in and out while a little history on Edward Snowden—Army recruit at 20, joined the CIA at 22, NSA contractor at 26—flashes across the screen, providing some insight to a person who most of the American public just sees as a buzzword. The clip ends with the words “one nation under surveillance for liberty and justice for all” emblazoned on an upside-down American flag, just in case you thought Oliver Stone was going to start playing it safe with this one. The trailer is cut to a cover of “This Little Light Of Mine” done in that haunting style that has become quite popular in movie trailers lately.
The cast of Snowden includes Nicolas Cage, Zachary Quinto, Melissa Leo, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the titular Snowden, who became the most wanted man in the world after revealing classified NSA documents to journalists who in turn let the cat out of the bag to several news outlets, violating the Espionage Act. Stone wrote the script along with Kieran Fitzgerald; the screenplay is based on the books The Snowden Files: The Inside Story Of The World’s Most Wanted Man by Luke Harding and Time Of The Octopus by Anatoly Kucherena. With all that government intrigue and moral ambiguity, it seems like a perfect sandbox for Stone to be playing in.
Snowden opens December 25th, apparently going for the anti-Star Wars crowd.