Synonymous as he is with the genre, it feels weird to say that it’s been 18 years since we last saw Steven Spielberg tackle aliens at all, and 21 years since they were front and centre in one of his films. That long ET-less streak has now finally been broken by his highly mysterious thriller Disclosure Day, an ultra-earnest return to the well that gifted us with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, War of the Worlds, and more. A terrible title and some pacing blips aside, it delivers on pretty much all the fronts you’re looking for in a Spielberg UFO drama.
Though the later acts will introduce some unfortunate, overly long pauses of pure exposition, Disclosure Day gets off to an admirably quick start. We’re introduced to a world where aliens have (very secretly) been on Earth for nearly 80 years; prodded, probed, and hidden by the US government and murky black-budget private companies. One employee of one of these companies is Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), who has recently seen footage of the authorities torturing one of the aliens and has been moved to leak everything he’s previously been hiding.
Daniel is a classic conspiracy thriller protagonist – morally forthright but in way over his head as attempts to link up with a resistance movement while being hunted by his sinister British boss Noah (Colin Firth). Meanwhile, local news weather presenter Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) has started accidentally reading people’s minds, and eventually she and Daniel must find one another, each linked with both one another and the aliens like no one else on the planet. With the background news constantly babbling about an impending World War 3, Disclosure Day’s story soon becomes very Watchmen-esque – a quest to reveal aliens to the world to bring peace to humanity, though here they aim to unite the world in awe and empathy rather than fear.
It’s a plot that is often teetering dangerously at the edge of too much silliness (especially when we get to some psychic CG animal sequences) but is kept on the right side of that line by the perfectly controlled performances. Everyone, from Blunt to O’Connor to Firth to a welcome Colman Domingo appearance as a pro-alien revolutionary, is on the exact same tonal page, no one letting a hint of irony into proceedings, keeping the emotional stakes real even when dealing with one of the MacGuffin-iest MacGuffins I’ve ever seen (a magic alien tube that can do anything).
That’s not to say everything is po-faced – Blunt in particular gives one of her liveliest ever performances, approaching screwball territory in the chaos of Margaret first getting her psychic ‘powers’ – but Spielberg, writer David Koepp, and the cast all understand that this whole endeavour will crumble the second it’s exposed to a quip. Some of the dialogue can be a little plodding (you can’t ever accuse Koepp of subtlety), but Disclosure Day is so touchingly committed to its central ideas of kindness and empathy as world-saving powers that you forgive the occasional leaden line.
As we’ve come to expect – maybe even take for granted – Disclosure Day’s set-pieces are superb. Spielberg has been making car chases and government raids thrilling for 50 years now and he doesn’t slow down here. A tense midnight sequence in a motel is him in the sort of thriller mode that made Munich and Minority Report such highlights of his 21st Century output, all the moves of the camera perfectly in tune with those of the characters, every edit made with a master’s precision.
Of course, it’s all backed by the sterling work of Spielberg’s regular collaborators Janusz Kaminski on cinematography duties (his trademark hazy-bright lighting bringing a real sense of wonder to proceedings) and John Williams providing one of his best scores in years at the incredible age of 94. With Disclosure Day’s June release date, it’s Spielberg’s first true summer blockbuster since Crystal Skull all the way back in 2008 and, while I’m sure that it’ll get financially swamped by big franchises like Toy Story and Minions, it still feels great to have the creator of the very phrase ‘summer blockbuster’ back where he belongs.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 