When cinephiles hear the words “Spielberg” and “aliens” in the same sentence, it tends to draw attention. Steven Spielberg has built a legendary career telling stories about what may be out there and answering the question, “Are we alone in the universe?” Starting in 1977 with Close Encounters of the Third Kind and again in 1982’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and later in 2005’s War of the Worlds, the award-winning auteur has presented many different takes on that answer, and now, Disclosure Day offers yet another. The question now isn’t just “are we alone?” but “does it really matter?”
Disclosure Day stars Emily Blunt (Jungle Cruise, A Quiet Place) as Margaret Fairchild, a weather gal at a Kansas City TV station who looks a cardinal in the eye and suddenly find herself able to speak different languages with ease and knows things about the people she meets that she shouldn’t. On the other side of this coin is Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), a former employee at the Wardex Corporation, a shadowy government contractor ran by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), who stole a massive amount of secret data on the existence of aliens. Scanlon wants Daniel found and the data retrieved, leading to a chase across the midwest as Kellner and Fairchild slowly come together to pull off a data dump of all data dumps, disclosing the existence of life outside our planet and beyond.
At its heart, Disclosure Day is a classic chase film, as Margaret and Daniel are being hunted by Scanlon and Wardex, with the latter tapping into some alien tech to reach out and find his prey, while the hunted are being led by a former Wardex operative Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo) who was also touched by the aliens and shown the truth. Some aspects of this great chase hold the film back and over-inflate the run time, as Hugo wants Margaret to come to his secret location where he has been building something to help them all, and most of that aspect of David Koepp’s script — based on a story by Spielberg — is unneeded. We see Margaret get activated by the bird in the first act, so spending the majority of act two on an unnecessary sidetrip has little payoff that just doesn’t work and bogs the film down to a crawl.
Spielberg’s directing style has come a long way since the 1970s and ’80s, and rewatching Close Encounters of the Third Kind before Disclosure Day was a disservice. Younger Spielberg was an absolute master of creating energy with his blocking, camera angles, and use of Hollywood magic, and yet Disclosure Day has little of that. Maybe its his age, or maybe he was shooting for a kinder, less-energetic experience, but either way, this film lacked his usual visual flare.
What saves Disclosure Day is a tight third act as all parties end up at the same Kansas City news station that Margaret calls home and she is able to report the story of the century — of all centuries, really — just as the world is on the brink of World War III. It’s the same mechanic from Alan Moore’s legendary DC Comics story, Watchmen, and it works just as effectively here. For those few fleeting moments in the film, the audience is filled with a sense of hope — and the film’s theme of humanity needing empathy — as the world in the film learns the truth, not with fear and anxiety, but with awe and wonder. And that is where Spielberg’s hallmark finally shines, just as the credits roll.
Disclosure Day is Steven Spielberg’s return to the kinds of stories that made him famous, but the older, wiser director has slowed down and that translates directly into the execution of the film. The story is strong and poses some great questions that we all need to ask ourselves, even as certain parts of the script are working to actively derail the entire production. In retrospect, the whole of the finished film mimics the characters and plot, with the insipid side stories serving as the foil for the narrative beats of the greater, more important story.
Even with its issues, Disclosure Day is worth a watch if only to help us all ask the same questions in the film. And if we truly are not alone in the universe, we collectively sure could use an intervention right about now.
Disclosure Day is rated PG-13 and is in theaters now.
