THE STORY – As a massive government conspiracy unravels, a targeted whistleblower races against time to bring about the extraordinary event that will change human history forever: the day of ultimate alien disclosure.
THE CAST – Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo & Wyatt Russell
THE TEAM – Steven Spielberg (Director) & David Koepp (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 145 Minutes
Multi-Academy Award winner, king of the box office, and all-around legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg has spent the better part of his extraordinary career asking one central question: Are we alone in the universe? From the wide-eyed astonishment of 1977’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” to the heartfelt friendship of “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” (1982), he has successfully (thematically, critically, and financially) revisited this genre many times in his career, a feat no filmmaker working today has been able to replicate, despite many trying. With “Disclosure Day” after over six decades of making movies, Spielberg is no longer asking this question. He seems to have arrived, somewhere in the depths of his years and wisdom, at a kind of personal certainty: we are not alone. This film, his first fully live-action sci-fi film not named “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” in over twenty years, is his means of grappling with what that truth would actually mean. The result is a thrilling sci-fi blockbuster that reaffirms Spielberg’s unmatched command of storytelling and his ability to evoke that childlike sense of curiosity in all of us when we used to look up to the stars and ask ourselves questions about the nature of the universe. Now, asking those same questions with a more mature lens and closer to the truth than ever about the existence of extraterrestrial beings outside our world, “Disclosure Day” invites the audience to ask new questions and be open to accepting the truth when it eventually presents itself.
“Disclosure Day” opens (if you can believe it, for Steven Spielberg), at a wrestling match where Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), a young cybersecurity expert and whistleblower, is surrounded by a rowdy crowd of humanity demanding destruction and carnage in the ring, before agents of the Wardex Corporation apprehend him. Wardex is a non-government entity operating in the shadows, hell-bent on keeping a seventy-nine-year cover-up, one involving alien life forms beyond our solar system and decades of made contact, and mistreatment entirely secret. Daniel has stolen those secrets, believing with every fiber of his being that the truth is universal, that Wardex has no more right to control it than to control oxygen or light, and he, along with several other Wardex defectors, will stop at nothing to make sure that full disclosure is given to the world. Caught along with him as collateral damage is Daniel’s girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson), a former nun who does not know everything about the man she’s with, and whose faith in God and humanity will be tested in ways she could not have imagined. Meanwhile, in Kansas City, TV meteorologist and former journalist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) has mysteriously begun speaking languages she does not know, including one that is clearly not human. She has been imbued with a power beyond her reasoning or ability to control, guided by forces she doesn’t understand, but that bring her a strange, unexpected comfort. How Daniel and Margaret are connected to the Wardex operation, to the cover-up, and to humanity’s only possible hope of survival is at the heart of David Koepp’s screenplay, all of it set against a world on the brink of World War III, with news reports and ambient societal dread suggesting a geopolitical state of emergency involving the United States, Russia and North Korea that’s more unstable than the Cuban Missile Crisis.
With a story outlined by Spielberg and a screenplay by “Jurassic Park” screenwriter David Koepp, the audience is thrown right into the middle of the action from the opening moments, with no warning or setup. Wardex is apprehending Daniel before we’ve had a chance to grasp who he is, what he has done, who Jane is, and her relationship to him, and why we should even care about any of this. It almost feels as though there is an entire fifteen or twenty-minute section of the movie that got cut in the editing room before the actual film begins. This may have introduced us to these characters and given us a sense of who they are before the action escalates. Instead, we are hurled right into the narrative and forced to pick up the pieces as we go, regarding not just the characters but also the story itself. This isn’t so much a flaw as it does create genuine intrigue, but merely an adjustment in expectations. It forces the audience to engage in a way that most summer blockbusters are afraid to do, as they continue to hold our hands through every story beat and character motivation. Here, part of the fun of watching “Disclosure Day” is working out who these people are, what the cover-up entails, what the technology left behind actually is, and how humanity has been using it even when we don’t fully comprehend it ourselves. The central piece of that technology is a palm-sized object referred to only as “the device,” an innocuous-looking tool that, when pressed by the person holding it, can bend reality itself. As both a narrative trigger and visual playground, it becomes one of the film’s most compelling elements, allowing Spielberg to push deeper into his science-fiction sensibilities through inventive camerawork, intricate sound design, expressive performances, and dynamic editing (It’s also the first Spielberg film since “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” to be edited without longtime collaborator Michael Kahn, with Sarah Broshar taking the reins and delivering work that complements the film’s propulsive energy).
The world Spielberg and Koepp have constructed is one where these story revelations don’t arrive in a vacuum. Constant news reports and other background indicators make clear that the world is on the brink of utter destruction, and the film’s most thought-provoking questions live in that tension. Will the truth bring everyone together, or will it continue to widen their divide and lead to the world’s collapse? These ideas are embodied most directly in the figures of Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), the orchestrator of the Wardex defect, Daniel’s mentor, and compassionate advocate for full disclosure, and Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), the head of the Wardex Corporation, who is convinced the world would succumb to fear and doom should the truth get out, which is precisely why he is so intent on stopping it. What is remarkable about the way Koepp and Spielberg handle Scanlon is that, by the time the movie reaches its climax, we understand his motivations, even as we oppose him, largely because Colin Firth brings an unexpected level of depth to the antagonistic role. However, one pivotal action near the very end feels slightly out of character and not fully earned, the kind of thing that must be done because the story calls for it to serve its larger themes, which is a recurring flaw with Koepp’s screenplay throughout the film.
Then there is the Jane character, played by U2 frontman Bono’s daughter, Eve Hewson. Still relatively young in her acting career following her breakout in “Flora and Son,” Hewson is given a showcase scene in which Scanlon attempts to use the device on her to control her every move, and her physical performance under intense duress continues to demonstrate her fantastic range. These are the moments that remind you Spielberg has always had an eye for finding performers at the precise right moment in their careers. Colman Domingo, meanwhile, spends most of his screen time separated from the rest of the ensemble, communicating via Bluetooth headset, guiding Daniel and Margaret toward their destinations without fully divulging all the information they need, allowing them to reach those discoveries on their own. It’s a quiet role for Domingo, but he brings gravity and warmth to every scene he inhabits, with the highlight being a scene he shares with Firth where the two characters’ ideologies clash. Wyatt Russell probably has the most thankless role in the ensemble, serving as the grounded, sometimes comedic opposition to Margaret’s “I’m just kind of rolling with it” attitude. Thankfully, the script moves on from his character halfway through the film before his rather annoying presence can sink the momentum. And Josh O’Connor is perfectly cast as the straight everyman, easy to follow through this journey, even as his gift for mathematics makes Daniel something of a closed-off loner. O’Connor carries the film with understated earnestness that is essential to the story working at all.
But for all the great performers Spielberg has gathered for his latest, “Disclosure Day” belongs entirely to Emily Blunt. Margaret Fairchild is a character who, early in the movie, was ready to pack up her life and move on at the first sight of trouble. Watching her transform under forces she cannot explain as they guide her to an unknown destination, led only by gut intuition, carries a tremendous amount of emotional power through the film’s third act precisely because Blunt can tap into the characters’ repressed childhood emotions and express those, plus new ones the character may never have even experienced before and have it all register for the audience with clarity and feeling. Blunt is utterly spectacular, guiding us through a wide display of senses with a consistently surprising performance that ranks among her very best work. The emotionally stirring climax of “Disclosure Day” hinges entirely on her, and she absolutely nails it, conveying the character’s fear and reluctance at receiving such a mysterious gift.
“Disclosure Day” is being marketed as a summer blockbuster, so naturally, Spielberg stages two major action sequences in the film, both functioning as car chases, and when the film settles into that rhythm, he proves once again that there is no one better at staging this kind of kinetic action. The sound and visual effects in these two sequences are really well-done, mostly because the blend of practical effects and in-camera action gives them a tactile weight that grounds the film even as its subject matter sometimes reaches for something far beyond its own ambition. Less successful is some of the CGI creature work, forest animals that present themselves as friendly and peaceful, but carry an artificiality that never quite convinces. It is a minor flaw, but one that is hard to ignore when it appears. And the great composer John Williams, at ninety-four years old, delivers one of his best scores in years. While there isn’t a single memorable, hummable motif that announces itself the way some of his greatest themes do, there is a ton of variety to be found here, with electronic and atmospheric textures merged with bright, lovely piano melodies and his trademark world-class orchestral strings, producing a work that feels rich, classical, and full of the sense of wonder you want from a Spielberg/Williams collaboration.
There is also the matter of the film’s political and spiritual commentary, something Spielberg has made more apparent in the latter stages of his career, with decades of wisdom and experience behind him, and a moral obligation to use his films to do more than simply entertain. The Jane character symbolizes how people whose lives are driven by belief in a higher power, in God, would react to learning that there are actual, physical supreme beings in the universe. However, the screenplay doesn’t tend to dive deeper into this thematic exploration as much as it just wants to let you know it’s there before abandoning it altogether (exemplified by Elizabeth Marvel’s Sister Maura, a nun who runs a convent Jane and Daniel are hiding out at, and the film completely abandons). And one of the film’s more powerful moments is how Spielberg and Koepp show the importance of the press, and how, even under heavy stress and a potentially life-altering crisis hanging in the balance, they still band together to get the truth out into the world, no matter what it is. During a time when corrupt officials seek to conceal the truth or change it to suit their own ends, and AI increasingly obscures whether what we see is real, Spielberg wants us to know that the truth is universal, it belongs to everyone, and it is pure. The film’s message is, ultimately, equally pure and simple: Empathy. We have forgotten how to be empathetic toward each other. We have forgotten how to listen, to understand. We have forgotten how to accept reality. It is not just that the truth needs to get out into the world. It is how the truth, through the hard work of everyday people and journalists, gets out into the world that matters.
Some will feel that the film’s ending is exactly where the story of “Disclosure Day” should begin, but that’s the point. It is not up to Spielberg or Koepp to give the audience answers, any more than it is up to us to find answers to the greater mysteries of the universe on our own. We have to decide how we would seek out this information, process it, and move forward as a society. Spielberg is not presumptuous enough to show us how we would react. But in typical Spielberg fashion, he is sentimental enough to suggest, to hope, that we would react positively, and that we would find a way to get through the single most significant event in the history of our planet. That hope, that belief in pursuing truth in the face of government secrecy, divine uncertainty, and impending Armageddon, adds up to the kind of awe-inspiring experience we go to the movies for. “Disclosure Day” is a film made by a human being who has been asking the same question his entire life and who, finally and beautifully, seems at peace with the answer. Are you ready for the answer?
