Disclosure Day (2026)
As a lifelong Spielberg nerd, we write this review with a heavy heart.....
To our everlasting sadness, we found that some of the unfavorable reactions to this film were indeed, all too true......
This film most assuredly does not capture that sense of awe and innocent pure wonder we all remember from "Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind" and "E.T.".
And the film generates excitement only in spurts, as mostly it's bogged down by its impenetrable plotting and silly sci-fi gimmickry left over from old 'Star Trek' episodes.
Its central premise, the engine that drives this slow chuggin' train, is that the existence of aliens and other worlds would drive us all into such an existential funk, society would collapse altogether.
Yes, we know. Imbecilic bullshit......but for the purposes of David Koepp's convoluted screenplay, that's the mission statement of the powerful, creepy government supported corporation Wardex, fronted by powerful, creepy Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth).
Wardex, in collusion with the government has spent the last 79 years, capturing, vivisecting and hiding away alien visitors unlucky enough to crash land on earth. You can think of Wardex as a sort of special intergalactic branch of ICE, terrorizing aliens before scooping them up into incarceration. But to borrow the tagline of many a 1990's movie trailer......"everything is about to change".
David Koepp's absurd, ridiculously over-involved storyline pours out an ocean of conspiracy theory molasses that Spielberg's forced to swim through. It's really nothing more than an extended chase, but festooned with some cornball sci-fi technology that sounds like Koepp was making it up as he went along. Try to imagine 'Close Encounters' if Spielberg had devoted almost all its running time to Richard Dreyfuss and Melinda Dillon crawling up the side of Devil's Tower. That'll give you a rough idea of what it's like to sit through this film.
Wardex's ex cyber security whiz Daniel Kellner (John O' Conner). swipes all their damning UFO-Alien files, with the help of his ex-nun girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson). They're out to tell the world and a frantic Scanlon and his heavily armed minions are out to stop them......the chase is on.
Meanwhile, Kansas City TV weather girl Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt in a bravura performance) is suddenly gifted with otherworldly powers, speaking in fluent alien-ese and assorted earthly foreign languages. She only confounds and confuses her live in boyfriend Jackson. (Wyatt Russell, essentially stuck with playing the Teri Garr role from "Close Encounters")
Margaret, by the way, can instantly Jedi mind-trick anybody with her ability to unload an empathetic information dump of everyone's most private personal problems. The relentless Scanlon, however, has access to an alien device allowing him to telepathically carry on personal mind-meld conversations with any of our three 'good guys, Daniel, Margaret and Jane.
Those good guys, with the Wardex stormtroopers yappin' at their heels, desperately race to meet up with Hugo Wakefield (Coleman Domingo) another Wardex defector who has become Scanlon's familiar and worthy nemesis.
Everything we've just described takes a lonnnngggg time to play out, with the actors wading through mountains of exposition that's not all that well explained anyway.
(Along the way, aliens pop up disguised as forest animals resembling CGI'd refugees from one of those terrible Disney live action versions of their animated films. Believe or not, we didn't mind the the cuddly 'Bambi' aliens at all as opposed to most critics.....)
You may well ask.....but what's all this mean? And is finding out for sure we're not alone in the universe going to change what sounds like an impending nuclear war with North Korea? Will it make us all gaze dreamily into the heavens, join hands with Kim Jung Un and sing Kumbaya together?
We can only reveal this much - it just feels like it must have been an uphill battle for Spielberg to finally shepherd this movie to its Grand Finale.....but when it at long last gets there, it looks silly, far fetched and then....abrupt. While there's unquestionably whole chunks of 'Disclosure Day' worth admiring, you'll get no warm hug 'Close Encounters'/'E.T. vibes out of it, so maybe don't go into the theater expecting any.
But let's remember that even when faced with a messy, all-over-the-place script like this one, Steven Spielberg remains one of cinema's great storytelling craftsmen......and he dutifully plows through "Disclosure Day" deploying his usual mastery of every single filmmaking art - editing, camera movement, directing of actors and when called upon, unparalleled action. (You'll literally gasp at a combo car and train chase that's already taken it's place as one of one of the director's most thrilling sequences ever.)
(What will stick in our mind within the 2 & 1/2 hour running time.....a brief, heartbreaking clip of the Wardex-Government team torturing a little alien visitor until he/she/it shrieks in wailing agony. We can picture Trump's official Nazi, Stephen Miller putting this clip on an endless loop, so he can watch it over and over, giggling with a tub of buttered popcorn.....)
And more sadness to report. Genius maestro John Williams, composing his 30th score for Spielberg (and most likely Williams' final bow) found little or nothing to inspire him musically here. He provides serviceable enough accompaniment for the imagery but you won't hear his orchestra hitting those iconic heights of his previous collaborations with the director. But during the end credits, you can only always close your eyes and use Williams' heartfelt soaring choir to imagine the alien visitation movie you wish Spielberg had made instead of this one.
Then again, maybe in this age of unease, anxiety, rancor, division and conspiracy paranoia, Spielberg's given us a thriller that can lift our hopes only just a little bit and not much more than that.
And that's kind of dispiriting for all of us.
2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)
(Despite our lowest rating ever for a Spielberg film, we'd still declare it a must see for all movie lovers. Remember, even second rate Spielberg is infinitely better than some other directors at their all-time best.....)
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