DISCLOSURE DAY Reviewed by GREG KING
Director: Steven Spielberg
Stars: Josh O’Connor, Emily Blunt, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo.
The truth is out there… and it will be revealed in Steven Spielberg’s latest sci-fi themed film Disclosure Day. This is a bit of a passion project for Spielberg given his lifelong obsession with aliens and extraterrestrial life, and it coalesces all of those themes and tropes of some of his earlier sci-fi films featuring aliens (Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and ET, etc). But it also taps into that X-Files-like paranoia and conspiracy theories that surround the rumoured government coverup of the truth about alien landings.
A shadowy non-official government organisation WARDEX (which stands for Waived Reporting, Development and Extraction) has been involved in covering up ugly experiments being conducted on aliens ever since the Roswell landings in New Mexico in 1947. Daniel Kellner (the very busy Josh O’Connor) is a cybersecurity expert with WARDEX, but he has escaped carrying a trove of archival footage and some alien technology which he intends to reveal to the world somehow. He is on the run with his girlfriend Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson), a former nun, whose religious convictions sometimes are at odds with Kellner’s plans.
WARDEX’s villainous CEO Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) dispatches his agents to try and stop Kellner and retrieve the archives.
Meanwhile in Kansas City television weather reporter Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) has a meltdown on air, suddenly speaking in a series of clicking sounds. She also develops intuitive powers. Her boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell) is unsure of what is happening, convinced that she is undergoing some kind of mental breakdown.
Kellner and Margaret find themselves somehow being led along a mysterious path, guided by Hugo (Colman Domingo, recently seen in the biopic Michael), a former WARDEX employee who is keen to protect the pair while ensuring that the truth is revealed. There is also an undisclosed secret past that links Kellner and Margaret.
Disclosure Day is a well-constructed thriller and chase movie written by frequent collaborator David Koepp (Jurassic Park, etc). There is plenty of action involving gun play, car chases, narrow escapes and a gripping suspenseful sequence involving a couple of speeding trains. Long time collaborator Janusz Kaminski’s camerawork is superb. John Williams provides another stirring and pulsating score to accompany the action.
O’Connor has a nice everyman quality about him that suits his role here. Blunt, who previously encountered aliens in A Quiet Place, delivers one of her best performances as Margaret and emotionally grounds the material. Domingo brings gravitas to his enigmatic role as the wise Hugo.
Firth doesn’t often play the villain, and he is very good here with a vaguely menacing quality, but he comes across as another of those cliched evil and rich villains who seem to have his own heavily armed private army willing to do his bidding. Those scenes in which he is able to use alien technology to penetrate the minds of people reminded me a bit of Spielberg’s 2002 futuristic dystopian sci-fi drama Minority Report.
While an enjoyable sci-fi thriller Disclosure Day is not one of Spielberg’s best films, and with an overly generous running time of 145 minutes it is a tad too long. There are some early clunky sequences as Spielberg establishes the main characters. However, there are some great special effects throughout, and the creation of the fictional archival alien footage from Roswell is superb.
★★★☆
