The story of CIA agent turned whistleblower Edward Snowden has been told in a variety of mediums including Laura Poitras' effective Citizenfour, 2014's Oscar winner for Best Feature Documentary. Is there enough to Snowden's tale to lend to a narrative film dramatizing it? At least one filmmaker thought so: Oliver Stone, a director famous for his outspoken politics, interest in current affairs, and belief in conspiracies.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt assumes the title role of Snowden, a film that explores the young man's life between 2004 and his news-making 2013 leak to journalists of classified intelligence documents. Gordon-Levitt impressively adopts and commits to a deeper voice that closely resembles that of the real Snowden. The necessity of that choice is easy to question, but Gordon-Levitt proves himself up to that vocal challenge, a year after skillfully portraying French tightrope walker Philippe Petit in Robert Zemeckis' underappreciated The Walk.

After being dismissed from military training due to a freak accident, Snowden, an extremely intelligent high school dropout, applies to the CIA and is narrowly accepted by Corbin O'Brian (an uncharacteristically imposing Rhys Ifans), who becomes his principal instructor and mentor there. Snowden wows O'Brian and his peers by completing his first test, which has an average completion time of 5 hours, in just 38 minutes.

In the course of his work at the agency, Snowden is soon exposed to the eye-opening access the government has to the lives and connections of not just suspected terrorists but ordinary American citizens. Among his missions is to find a vulnerable banker and disrupt his life to serve the agency's means. Along the way, Snowden meets photographer and pole dancer Lindsay Mills (Shailene Woodley), who quickly figures out his occupation and becomes a serious girlfriend to whom he cannot disclose the nature of his work.

Snowden's experiences in intelligence breed some understandable paranoia in him, as he places tape over the easily hijacked webcam on Lindsay's computer and begins to fear his home is bugged. The film bounces between Snowden's work and the principal setting of Citizenfour, the Hong Kong hotel room where in a white t-shirt he opens up to Poitras (played by Melissa Leo), American journalist Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto), and Scottish Guardian reporter Ewen MacAskill (Tom Wilkinson).

Snowden is long and a tad meandering. His story fascinates more than that of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, which was dramatized in the Benedict Cumberbatch flop The Fifth Estate, but less than Mark Zuckerberg, whose life became the gold standard of modern biopics in David Fincher's outstanding The Social Network. Stone and his co-screenwriter Kieran Fitzgerald (The Homesman) paint a complex portrait of their hero without ever once showing his family or upbringing. They do not do the best job of making us understand why Snowden essentially throws his life away to expose the extent of government surveillance, though it at least makes the point that he does this out of some sense of duty. Like Assange, what Snowden did in many ways is the bigger story than anything revealed in his leaked documents at least to the viewer looking for a human interest story having already accepted privacy's non-existence in today's world.

There are a lot of elements in Snowden that compel, from the use of real news footage to a pudgy Nicolas Cage turning up in a legitimate theatrical release as an embittered CIA engineer who befriends Snowden. As a whole, though, the film never sizzles the way it must have in Stone's mind. He's been searching for a comeback vehicle forever, turning to such watershed issues as George W. Bush's presidency and 9/11, to no real avail. It's been a quarter-century since Stone last really commanded the attention of the public and the industry with JFK. His ability to assemble casts rich with in-demand talent proves he's not irrelevant and his distant Oscar-winning hits like Platoon and Wall Street are not forgotten.

Delayed from its scheduled Christmas 2015 opening to May 2016, but not actually releasing in theaters until September, four months after a Cannes Film Festival premiere, Snowden drew mixed reviews and struggled to find a huge audience, grossing just $21.6 million domestic in distribution by Open Road Films and a mere $9.8 M overseas despite a $40 M production budget. It arrived on Blu-ray combo pack and DVD this week from Open Roads' home video partner Universal.

Blu-ray & DVD Details 2.40:1 Widescreen (DVD Anamorphic) Blu-ray: 5.1 DTS-HD MA (English) DVD: Dolby Digital 5.1 (English) Subtitles: English for Hearing Impaired, French, Spanish Extras Subtitled; Not Closed Captioned Release Date: December 27, 2016 Suggested Retail Price: $34.98 Two single-sided, dual-layered discs (DVD-9 & BD-50) Blue Keepcase in Embossed Cardboard Slipcover Also available on standalone DVD ($29.98 SRP) and Amazon Instant Video

VIDEO and AUDIO

Snowden doesn't opt for the bold Oliver Stone style of yore. Instead, its 2.40:1 visuals maintain a slick and sleek appearance that the Blu-ray presents without incident. The 5.1 DTS-HD master audio mix is suitably engaging and perhaps a bit more immersive than you expect the material to be. Burned-in subtitles are used to translate the tiny bit of American Sign Language.

BONUS FEATURES, MENUS, PACKAGING and DESIGN

On both Blu-ray and DVD, Snowden is joined by three bonus features.

First up comes a deleted scenes section holding five scenes (8:51). They include an extended look at Snowden's CIA training, a scene of the journalists meeting, a gallery opening for Lindsay's art (introducing Snowden to a potential love rival), an additional appearance by Scott Eastwood's character, and a hotel room scene of monitoring the scoop's coverage.

Next up, "Finding the Truth" (3:57) is a short, brisk, slick making-of featurette driven by a mix of film clips, talking heads, and a touch of behind-the-scenes footage.

Last but not least comes a 41-minute Q & A session, moderated by Matt Zoller Seitz and attended by Oliver Stone, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Shailene Woodley. These filmmakers, however, are upstaged by Edward Snowden himself, speaking via Internet connection. One of the more flavorful Q & A sessions I've encountered, this piece gathers insight not just on Snowden the movie but on what Snowden's whistleblowing uncovered and the meaning and threat of privacy today. The session closes with a birthday cake for Stone.

Sadly absent here: Oliver Stone's very Oliver Stoney turn-off-your-cell-phone PSA that preceded the film in theaters, in which the director cited the smart, powerful handheld device as having the capability to burn your life down to the ground. How could that not have been preserved here? At least there's YouTube.

The discs open with short trailers for Bleed for This, Jason Bourne, and Anthropoid plus longer ones for Denial and Hitchcock/Truffaut. Neither these nor Snowden's own trailer is accessible by menu, but the DVD's Previews page does hold additional ads for Triple 9, Spotlight, Dope, The Gunman, Rosewater, Nightcrawler, Chef, and End of Watch, with an option to play them all. (The Blu-ray opts to instead load fresh previews from the Internet.)

The main menu applies some score over a basic adaptation of poster art. The Blu-ray lets you resume playback but subjects you to the disc-loading trailers again if you don't take it up on that offer.

The two plainly-labeled discs share a slipcovered standard blue keepcase with your Digital HD insert.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Snowden is not the return to form and relevance that Oliver Stone has spent years aiming for. It's a watchable and polished drama that you'll remember more for Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Napoleon Dynamite-esque adopted voice than for its exploration of present-day privacy invasion and the man who risked everything to call attention to it.

With fine picture and sound plus a decent handful of extras, Universal's combo pack lends to a rental.

Buy Snowden from Amazon.com: Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD / DVD / Instant Video