Disclosure Day comes at a very interesting point in Steven Spielberg’s career. The legendary filmmaker’s recent late-period run has been rife with fascinating choices, with his last two in particular (West Side Story and The Fablemans) being some of his best in a long time. This time, he returns with his first proper sci-fi film in 20 years, and while Disclosure Day doesn’t reach the heights of his previous alien-themed masterpieces, it’s still undoubtedly an entertaining summer blockbuster done in the way only he can do it.
The film starts off in the last place I expected a Spielberg film to start: In the middle of a wrestling match. Rather, It’s not about the people brawling in the ring but the man hiding in plain sight just outside of it. That man is Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), a math whiz-turned-cybersecurity expert on the run after stealing evidence of the most important government cover-up in history: Unquestionable proof of extra-terrestrial life. Right from the get-go, the film wastes no time getting right into the action, as it drops you right in the middle of Daniel’s story; just as he rescues his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) after being held hostage by his former employers, the Wardex corporation.
At the same time that Daniel and Jane are on the run, Kansas City meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) starts experiencing unexplainable events. After seeing a red cardinal in her apartment during breakfast, she suddenly becomes fluent in multiple languages she’d never spoken before, psychically recalls memories and feelings of people she’s never met, and, most notably, starts speaking in an alien language during a live broadcast. Both Margaret and Daniel are drawn to each other in a way they don’t yet understand, and are trying to make their way to fellow Wardex whistleblower Hugo (Coleman Domingo), who intends to disclose the evidence to the world before their former boss, Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), can stop them.
“While Disclosure Day doesn’t reach the heights of his previous alien-themed masterpieces, it’s still undoubtedly an entertaining summer blockbuster done in the way only he can do it.”
When the marketing for Disclosure Day started ramping up, many people speculated that it was a secret successor to Spielberg’s previous classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind. While I can certainly say that it is not that, both films do very much feel in lockstep with one another thematically. It takes a while to get there, though. The first act feels much more akin to a grounded version of Minority Report, with its breakneck pacing, conspiracy-thriller tone, and washed-out colour palette in Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography. It’s not a Spielberg blockbuster without a thrilling chase sequence, and there are two in particular–one involving a train–that show that he’s still got it.
Where the Close Encounters comparisons start to ring true in its later acts, where the themes surrounding faith, community and the necessity of empathy are really hammered home. Some of these moments are very effective; others come across as hokier than they should. Those latter ones didn’t help, courtesy of an audience member or two who would start laughing at random intervals during my screening. The performances are mostly solid, with Emily Blunt giving one of her strongest performances in recent memory and Colman Domingo continuing to be magnetic every time he’s on screen.
“The performances are mostly solid, with Emily Blunt giving one of her strongest performances in recent memory and Colman Domingo continuing to be magnetic every time he’s on screen.”
Conversely, I found Josh O’Connor –an actor I typically really like– to be unfortunately a bit unmemorable. Colin Firth I also found to be hit-or-miss as the villain, but there are moments when he is effective, such as an early sequence in which Scanlon interrogates Jane while possessing her via an alien artifact. There are also mysteries that are deliberately kept vague but feel more clunky than intriguing, particularly when it comes to the leads’ repressed childhoods and also the range of Margaret’s abilities.
For the messiness of the story’s central mysteries, I think it really nails the ending. It’s one that will be divisive for sure, mainly if you can believe in Spielberg’s wide-eyed optimism for what the state of the world could be or not. But personally, the last 20 minutes are genuinely moving.
Disclosure Day is a movie I genuinely don’t know how the general audience will take to it. It doesn’t lack thrills, but it’s much more focused on big-hearted emotion rather than pure spectacle. It inhabits the great and not-so-great of Spielberg’s work, and ultimately, it’s why I’d still say it’s worth checking out. At the very least, it’s nice to see him back in his element.
