Disclosure Day Movie Review
Daniel Kellner is a man on the run. With stolen data and a mysterious device, he is fleeing a shady organization called Wardex led by Noah Scanlon. Scanlon relentlessly, yet politely, pursues Daniel and is willing to get the stolen items back by any means necessary, including by kidnapping Daniel’s girlfriend, Jane, and using her as bait.
As Daniel attempts to outsmart Wardex and get Jane back, he’s guided by Hugo Wakefield and his supporters, who want the world to learn what Daniel has in his possession.
As Daniel deals with Wardex, TV weather girl Margaret Fairchild faces a crisis of her own. After a strange encounter with a cardinal, Margaret finds herself unexpectedly imbued with strange abilities. Her unusual day culminates in an incident on live television.
Margaret begins uttering strange noises and passes out. As doctors begin to try to discover what went wrong, Margaret’s abilities inform her that she’s in danger and that she should seek out someone she’s never met before – Daniel Kellner.
How are Daniel and Margaret connected? What’s in the information that Daniel stole from Wardex? And how would the world react to the biggest news story in the history of mankind?
Simply put, the biggest thing Disclosure Day has going for it is the cast. Emily Blunt leads them as Margaret Fairchild. Blunt is the rare actress who is believable in any role she’s placed in. She can play Mary Poppins as equally convincing as she does a warrior in Edge of Tomorrow. She brings that acting range here as the role of Margaret calls for her to be a vain weather girl, a woman mysteriously given alien powers, and a person with PTSD. Blunt does it all, making her character someone the audience cares about.
Josh O’Connor is equally good as Dr. Daniel Kellner. He makes a good “everyman” and a man on the run you root for. Daniel finds himself torn between his mission to share the truth with the world and his need to protect his love, Jane Blankenship. O’Connor first came to my attention in Wake Up Dead Man, and he’s been a favorite of mine since. He was a great choice for this role.
The rest of the cast is also great. Colin Firth is super-creepy as Noah Scanlon. He’s a rare villain you can hate while simultaneously believing he could be redeemable. Eve Hewson has a breakout performance as Jane Blankenship. She has some of the more memorable moments in Disclosure Day as she finds herself being played as a puppet by the warring factions in the film. Jane is also one of the few characters who wrestle with the potential ramifications of releasing information about aliens to the world.
Colman Domingo is good as Hugo Wakefield, the benevolent force guiding Daniel and Margaret. Domingo largely performs over the phone, with no one else in the scene, but he makes it work. He makes a strong case to be the next Morgan Freeman with his distinctive voice and noble persona.
Wyatt Russell rounds out the cast as Margaret’s boyfriend Jackson. Russell brings much of the humor to the role, and he’s well-teamed with Emily Blunt. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get as much screen time in the role as you’d hope.
I’m a lifelong fan of Steven Spielberg, and I’ll go see any movie he makes, especially one about aliens. But I found Disclosure Day to be difficult to like for several reasons. First off, the script comes off as a crazy quilt of ideas from Spielberg. It seems like he took all of the leftover ideas from his previous decades of moviemaking and then banded them together under the overarching theme of “aliens.”
It’s admittedly a compelling pitch, but it ultimately doesn’t work. He spends a ton of time on mind control and psychic phenomena, which doesn’t really feel connected to alien lore. When he does delve into alien lore, it all feels done before and done better by others (and even Spielberg himself). We see crop circles, but they don’t feel meaningfully connected to this story.
We see gray aliens, but they’ve been portrayed many times before. We see a lot of other alien themes shoehorned in, but it seems many years too late. Signs, Fire in the Sky, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind all did it better.
And when you start trying to figure out how the aliens are connected to the psychic powers and other phenomena, the dots don’t connect. Throw in a subplot involving Parkinson’s and PTSD, and you find yourself asking, “What was the point of that?”
The only interesting aspect of Disclosure Day is exploring the world’s reaction to the revelation that aliens are real, but even that is done weakly. Spielberg floats the idea that all the world’s religions would collapse if aliens were revealed and chaos ensued, but that’s not very realistic. One character proclaims her faith regardless of whether aliens are real, but it feels like it was thrown in at the last minute.
Another idea Spielberg throws out is that aliens and their associates would be worshipped as deities when they were revealed, but that just feels like Spielberg’s complete misread of religious people and their faith. The world’s reaction is shown only in the last 10 minutes of the movie, and it’s not particularly realistic.
When the US Government began releasing UFO files, the reaction was skepticism and indifference until the next news cycle started and everyone moved on. It was not the world-uniting moment Spielberg seems to think it would be. In fact, the audience I saw Disclosure Day with started snickering at the film’s big reveal. Combine that with an unsatisfying ending, and you have a disappointing moviegoing experience.
Disclosure Day is only required viewing for the biggest fans of Steven Spielberg and Emily Blunt. Overall, the film is dull and long, and upon scrutiny, the story makes little sense. It’s a not-great film made very well. You’d probably be more entertained watching the UFO video files released by the US Government online than watching this.
DISCLOSURE DAY REVIEW RATING: 5.5 OUT OF 10
Universal Pictures will release Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day in theaters and IMAX on June 12. It has been rated PG-13 for action/violence, some bloody images, and strong language.
