Josh Review Disclosure Day
Disclosure Day, the new film directed by Steven Spielberg (with a story by Mr. Spielberg and a screenplay by David Koepp, who wrote Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds, Carlito’s Way, Mission: Impossible, and many more great movies) opens with the world on the brink of a global conflict. But a more earth-shattering development is imminent, when cyber-security expert Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) steals evidence of the existence of extra-terrestrials from the private security company, Wardex, that has been in league with high-ranking U.S. military officers for decades to keep this massive secret. Wardex’s CEO Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) makes use of stolen alien technology to pursue Daniel, but he has an additional problem, as elsewhere, in Kansas City, a small-time weather reporter Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) suddenly starts speaking in an alien tongue live on the air. What mysterious force is drawing Daniel and Margaret together, and can they stay one step ahead of those pursuing them, determined to stop them from revealing the truth to the world?
Steven Spielberg is without question one of the all-time masters of cinema, and I am thrilled that, at age 79, he is still making movies. Many of Mr. Spielberg’s early films rank among my absolute all-time favorite movies, with Raiders of the Lost Ark and Close Encounters of the Third Kind being at or near the very top of my personal list. From Jaws to E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial to Empire of the Sun, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Munich, and so many more, Mr. Spielberg has made so many amazing movies over the course of his incredible career. Most impressively, I think Mr. Spielberg has continued to demonstrate that he can knock it out of the park like almost no one else, even in recent years, as he’s gotten older. 2015’s Bridge of Spies was excellent, and 2017’s The Post and 2022’s The Fablemans were both stone cold masterpieces, in my opinion.
Disclosure Day doesn’t rank up there with any of those top-tier Spielberg movies that I just listed, but I enjoyed seeing it, and there were a number of sequences in the film in which I was pleasantly reminded just what a master filmmaker Steven Spielberg is: I’m thinking of the car and train chase when Daniel and his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) try to escape from Wardex head of security Boyd (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) & his men; and Scalon’s forced mind-meld with Jane, in which he tries to suborn her will and turn her to his side. The first half of this film is excellent, a tense, suspenseful thriller. The back half is weaker, unfortunately. I think the movie goes on way too long, and we get a series of too-many climaxes (as we move from the secret location that Hugo and his team have been building, through flashbacks, and on to the Kansas City TV station) in which my interest started to flag. I think many of the film’s characters could have benefitted from more fleshing out, and I think the film leaves us with way too many unanswered questions. (More on that below.) But I enjoyed seeing Mr. Spielberg back in this world of sci-fi drama, and I was happy to see a made-for-adults dramatic film that, while it has some action sequences, isn’t just a big-budget spectacle. I think this is a film worth seeing; you just might want to moderate your expectations somewhat.
The cast — as is almost always the case in a Steven Spielberg film — is terrific. Let’s start with Emily Blunt, who is magnetic as usual. I’ve been a fan of hers ever since her small role in Charlie Wilson’s War, and in recent years Ms. Blunt has been delivering one great performance after another (in Looper, Edge of Tomorrow, A Quiet Place, Oppenheimer, The Fall Guy, and more). I love the many colors Ms. Blunt gives to Margaret, who starts as a somewhat flighty TV personality who dreams of more but whose reach always seems to exceed her grasp. Ms. Blunt has to take Margaret through a roller-coaster of emotions as the film unfolds, and I was always drawn in by the emotions of Ms. Blunt’s performance. I want to make special note of how terrific she is in one of my favorite scenes in the movie, in which, after surviving a tense action sequence, we see Margaret overcome with a panic attack. First off, what a great idea for a scene — it’s striking to see a movie character respond the way most normal human beings would, after being put through an exhilarating movie action scene!! (It reminds me of Tom Hanks’ brilliant work in the final minutes of Captain Phillips.) Ms. Blunt is magnificent in that moment, drawing the audience into the panic that Margaret is feeling.
Josh O’Connor was incredible in Wake Up Dead Man, and he’s solid here as Daniel, the every-man thrust into this extraordinary circumstance. I wish the film allowed us to get to know Daniel better. But even with a thin character, Mr. O’Connor is compelling to watch as he makes his way through this adventure. Colin Firth is a magnificent villain as Wardex CEO Noah Scanlon. Mr. Firth beautifully underplays his scenes; this is no mustache-twirling, chewing-the-scenery villain. Noah is quiet and deliberate. But he is scary in his unwavering determination that 1) he is right and 2) he will do whatever it takes to get what he wants. Also, I quite like the choice to make the villain of this movie the super-rich head of a global technology company. That feels like the exact correct choice for right now! I’m not sure I’ve seen any of Eve Hewson’s major roles in the past few years (though wikipedia tells me she was a child actor in Mr. Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, a decade ago!!), but I’ll be paying attention to her now, because she is terrific as Daniel’s girlfriend Jane. I quite like the storyline the film gives Jane, as a former nun who must wrestle with the implications to her faith that the existence of alien “supreme beings” might mean. And Ms. Hewson is amazing in the mind-meld scene with Noah that I mentioned above. I wish the film gave her more to do in the second half. Colman Domingo is always a welcome screen presence, and his beautiful voice is well-used in this character, Hugo Wakefield, who spends most of the movie coaching other characters on the phone. I wish we got to know more about his character; his history and his motivations. (Are you sensing a trend with my comments? This cast is great, but they’re often called upon to bring life to characters who, upon reflection, often come off as flatter than I’d ideally have liked.) Russell Wyatt (Thunderbolts*, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters) is fantastic as Margaret’s boyfriend, who is befuddled by her suddenly strange behavior. Mr. Wyatt can play the drama, but he gives his scenes a touch of humor that is very welcome in this otherwise very serious movie.
From back when I first saw a trailer for this movie, I was worried that this would be a hard movie to end. Either the characters succeed or fail in revealing the existence of extra-terrestrials to the world — I could see either path winding up being anti-climactic. I like some of the film’s choices, but overall I think there are problems in the third act that weaken this movie for me. SPOILERS AHEAD in this paragraph, so beware!! I MEAN IT. SPOILERS!!! Stop reading here if you haven’t seen the movie yet!! OK, what works? I liked the choice to step into the strange and surreal when we wind up back in a recreation of Margaret’s childhood home. (That’s often been a choice that has paid off in this type of heady sci-fi movie: see 2001: A Space Odyssey and Contact for two examples.) I liked the fun surprise of what Hugo and his team had been building for the whole movie, and I liked the circular nature of how that device was used to lead us and the characters into a flashback. I was also pleasantly surprised by the revelation that Daniel and Margaret were connected by their childhood experiences with these aliens. That was neat. But I was left with so many questions. Why were these aliens experimenting on Margaret and Daniel? Did they do the same to other kids? Why did they wait so long to “activate” them? Was Daniel activated in a similar way that Margaret was (when the bird visited her), but we just didn’t see that? How did Hugo know about Margaret and Daniel? Was he also touched by the aliens? We see lots of footage of alien spaceships, but then the movie also suggests that aliens have been hanging out on the planet for years, disguising themselves as friendly animals. What are they up to? Did they just experiment on two kids and then wait around doing nothing for several decades while those kids grew up? Why was this specific moment the moment that Hugo and all his collaborators felt they needed to take action? How did Hugo know to be waiting for the aliens to activate Margaret the way they did? Why did they choose that method — her speaking an alien language on live TV — to reveal their existence to the world, and why did they wait so many decades to do that? Why did all the aliens in the footage look tiny, but the old alien at the end was enormous, towering over Margaret and Daniel?? These questions are frustrating to me. I compare this to the feeling I have watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In that movie, we similarly don’t get a lot of specific information on what the aliens are up to, and why, but there the enigmatic nature worked for me, and I was satisfied by the ending. Here, I walked out of the theater asking too many questions. (Though, speaking of Close Encounters, I did smile to see several shots in the download of footage at the end of this movie that seemed to me to be callbacks to Close Encounters. In my head-cannon, those events happened in the world of this movie!)
I will say that the film’s final word of dialogue, which I won’t spoil here, worked for me. While I’d have liked to have seen more of what happened across the world, following Margaret’s broadcast, I think the film makes it sufficiently clear that we’re being presented with a vision of humanity that is basically optimistic. So I think we know enough to know that things will be OK. And I liked the way that final word of dialogue connected to the movie’s main message of empathy. This feels like a concept that is more important than ever these days, and I thought that was a strong idea at the heart of this movie. (It also feels correct to me, for a Steven Spielberg alien movie. True, War of the Worlds was a nastier version of aliens on Earth, but this feels more in line with the optimism of Mr. Spielberg’s classic films E.T. and Close Encounters. This makes me happy.)
Were there times watching this movie that I longed to see Mulder and Scully enter the picture? Yes, there were! That probably says more about me than this movie. There is something a little retro these days about the idea of a government conspiracy to hide the existence of extra-terrestrials, but I don’t mind a talented filmmaker using modern tools to bring a retro sort of idea to life. (Heck, that’s at the heart of Raiders and Star Wars!!)
I enjoyed watching Disclosure Day. As I think I’ve made clear, there are aspects of it that I wish had been executed differently. I wish the characters were more three-dimensional, and I wish the third act was tighter and more satisfying. But sitting in the dark and watching a new Steven Spielberg movie unspool before my eyes is something I still treasure. I hope Mr. Spielberg has many more movies yet to share with us.
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