The Putin Interviews (2017)

Simply Perfect

Great Film overall

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

On some point in the video putin shows a video on an iphone which contains 'Russian airforce attack against ISIS. But this is a big lie. This video footage made in 2009, by American troopers who fight in Afganisthan Tho Russian voise is fake too. So Oliver Stone, the great filmamaker fooled. Tha't pity. The real filmmaking is more pricise and more intelligent.

Putin is a mystery to us all. Surely he is controversial, surely he is a target of our media time and time again.I read many comments saying Stone is not 'on the ball' and too soft. Which makes perfect sense. If one does interviews over a period of time one should not press too hard or otherwise the project may cease to exist.Though I am a big fan of Colbert, I think Colbert in his interview with Stone about these interviews made a huge mistake. Colbert somehow assumes Stone had to be tougher on Putin and ask tougher questions while clearly Stone is not one to judge but tried to carefully paint a picture to the world.As far as I am concerned Stone did an amazing job. He interviews Putin as if he wants to paint a picture about his life, ideology and equally discusses political and historical events. Stone presses on issues sometimes, but never hard. He gives Putin a voice and a fair chance to explain himself.When watching this, do understand it is not Stones' DUTY or TASK to hammer or judge Putin. Why should he? He merely offers insight into the mind and life of a controversial world leader. We all know the human rights violations are going on in Russia, we all know the opinions of CNN and Fox, we all think we know that Russia is to blame for everything that goes wrong. But are our truths the truths of others? Often times it is perspective and a matter of which side of the fence we exist that determines our reality.

Oliver Stone's The Putin Interviews is… garbage. Stone, though respected as a filmmaker, at least for some of his earlier works, loses all credibility with this attempt at a "documentary". This four-part series is not a documentary, and it cannot be called journalism either. Is just a platform that Putin uses to justify to the world his policies, in his own manner of course: politically correct at times, even diplomatic, but with some subtle/not-so-subtle references, even irony when needed. Stone as an interviewer is practically useless. His questions are at times obviously ill-prepared, but, more annoying is his way of asking something by providing the way in which the question could be dodged. Not that Putin needs help with that. He has a lot of practice with his annual Valdai Club's meetings, Direct Lines and call-in shows. All of this while witnessing Stone's anti-Americanism and admiration for everything that is Russia or Russian. In the end we do not learn anything new. To be avoided.

I was kind of expecting in what direction this movie was going to go! Given that i have seen some movies from Mr. Stone and his documentaries, i knew this wasn't going to be attack as the Western journalists do. I saw it as a chance given to someone to explain himself without the need to battle with the journalists. After all when you get accused of something an go in front of a court, you are given a chance to tell your version of a story. Innocent until proved guilty! If you want to see both sides of the story, you should definitively see it! After that make your own opinion!