“Disclosure Day” Review

While individual scenes are proof of his mastery of action-adventure filmmaking, in “Disclosure Day”, Steven Spielberg often feels like he’s doing an impression of Spielberg, riffing on his most popular sci-fi masterpieces, be it “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” or “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial”, rather than delivering an original masterpiece, evoking its own distinct transcendence.

The movie opens with a punch, literally. Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) sits anxiously in the audience for a wrestling match. When everybody around him stands for applause, he remains seated, a ball of stress holding tightly to a backpack filled with files exposing his company’s long-hidden knowledge about extra terrestrial life. After barely escaping from the threatening company man Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), Kellner sets off on a sci-fi adventure to reveal all he knows to the public in a quest involving his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson), an idealistic co-worker (Colman Domingo), and the aimless weather anchor, Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), who finds herself inexplicably changed after an encounter with a bird.

Throughout his career, Steven Spielberg films have been labelled as child-like, both as a term of praise and scorn. As a positive, this label commends his singular ability to render viewers awe-struck, matching the characters in their sense of innocent wonder at the spectacle we encounter together. When used as criticism, this term disparages the naivety of his big budget fables in which there are good guys and bad guys and no room for emotional complexity. At his best, Spielberg uses this moral simplicity in service of the sublime, resulting in some of the most iconic and memorable films ever made. But when Spielberg’s working from a lesser story, as he is here, his filmmaking instincts instead come off as out of touch, too earnest for our cynical age.

“Disclosure Day”, written by David Koepp, is brimming with ideas about how the world would react to irrefutable proof of extra-terrestrial life. Much of these ideas are thematically interesting and timely, recalling recent governmental disclosures surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, the John F. Kennedy assassination or, yes, aliens but the delivery of these ideas through ham-fisted dialogue, as characters while away their time moralizing, philosophizing, and theorizing about humanity’s ability to handle the truth distracts from the essential story of an Edward Snowden for the alien set on the run from a shadowy non-governmental organization looking to sustain its cover-up.

The story is disappointingly lacking in cleverness or surprise, with events instead marching from Point A to Point B and so on with little in the way of disruption. Character arcs are flat, with nobody exhibiting profound change as their understanding of the world is shaken, and the action follows a predictable pattern in which Kellner arrives at a new destination, takes a deep breath, and is then chased away by Scanlon’s goons. The characters themselves seem unknowable by design, resulting in an emotional distance that keeps the drama more theoretical than human. No matter how much close-up magic Spielberg can work in individual scenes, he can only do so much to hide the fact that the story itself is imperfect, filled with tantalizing set ups that lead to inconsequential pay offs.

While the story itself is wanting, “Disclosure Day” nevertheless thrills as a sci-fi adventure, proving that Spielberg is unparalleled in his ability to craft impeccably paced cinema filled with expertly staged set pieces. It is no simple feat to make a two and a half hour film that never lags, and yet Spielberg delivers a non-stop entertainment, even if it fails to inspire the awe characteristic of his very best work.

Disclosure Day
Rated PG-13 for action/violence, some bloody images and strong language.
Running Time: 2 hours and 25 minutes.

Director Steven Spielberg
Writers David Koepp
Stars Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo
Rating PG-13
Running Time 145 Minutes
Genres Action, Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller