With a new Steven Spielberg alien movie coming out, everybody’s nervously wondering: Is this thing “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” or “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”?
movie review
DISCLOSURE DAY
Running time: 145 minutes. PG-13 (Some bloody images, action, violence, strong language). In theaters June 12.
Neither, actually. “Disclosure Day” hews closer to “Minority Report,” with a man on the run from menacing forces.
There is no extraterrestrial invasion, fleet of space ships or laser weapons as in “The War of the Worlds.” Unlike “E.T.,” an adorable martian is not featured as a main character.
This nonetheless exciting sci-fi film is about a whistleblower who knows too much and is fighting to expose the greatest cover-up in history. Kinda like “The Post!”
All that said, “Disclosure Day” is not a serious imagining of how humanity will discover that there’s life on other planets — a la Denis Villeneuve’s “Arrival.” It’s Spielberg having big, bouncy, creative, strange fun. For starters, telepathy plays a major part.
OK, I guess it isn’t totally different from “Crystal Skull.”
Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp, in a unique spin, have taken the U.S. Government out of the mix. No sweaty Oval Office phone calls or swarms of FBI agents here either.
Instead, a private data security company in Virginia called Wardex is charged with protecting the secret that little green men have visited Earth many times. The idea is that presidential power can change over every four years, so this consequential knowledge needs to be kept somewhere safe and consistent. Wardex conceals video evidence spanning eight decades — Roswell included — and powerful, mysterious artifacts.
Not for long. A fed-up employee named Daniel (Josh O’Connor) steals all that info and heads off with his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) to reveal the truth alongside other Wardex defectors, including Colman Domingo’s Hugo. They’re chased by his boss Noah, a role that lets Colin Firth snarlingly go full villain.
“History doesn’t have a reset key,” he tells Daniel, sensitively played by O’Connor. “If you do this, there’s no undoing it.”
Daniel picks the red pill.
Westward in Kansas City, Missouri, is Margaret (Emily Blunt), a TV meteorologist who dreams of becoming an anchor. The same day Daniel vamooses, she begins speaking in fluent Russian to her husband (Wyatt Russell) out of nowhere and is suddenly able to read minds. During a traffic stop, she all but goes, “These are not the droids you’re looking for.”
Then, on air, Margaret’s mouth starts rapidly clicking — the aliens’ language, wouldn’t you know — and she dramatically passes out. The clip goes viral and Wardex is now on the hunt for her, too.
Blunt, better all the time, is magnificent as a confused yet determined woman whose brain becomes out of her control. She goes into medium-like trances, speaking at a rapid pace, only to leap back to her neurotic, oddball self seconds later. Easy to love, she’s Holly Hunter in “Broadcast News” by way of “The X-Files.”
Spielberg and Koepp’s story is an original one, and so what Daniel and Margaret are doing and the nature of who they really are unravels grippingly, even when a plot device or piece of dialogue is clunky.
Some of the wobblier bits: America is days away from World War III with North Korea, and Domingo gets some philosophizing monologues that could’ve been written by a high college kid. Spielberg keeps his movie at a sprint, so the rough portions are quickly forgotten.
Once we have the pair’s backstories mostly figured out, the filmmakers throw in enough weird details to keep “Disclosure Day” feeling new. Animals are used cleverly, though their CGI could be a lot better. Alien tech lets evil Noah track down Daniel and Jane with his mind. And a few suppressed memories are essential to the future of the planet.
It’s all set to an old-school John Williams score, grand though not upbeat, that nostalgically brings to mind Indy and his dad escaping a Nazi castle in “The Last Crusade.” At 94 years old, Williams continues to understand what movie magic sounds like better than anybody who’s come after him or likely will.
That same innate knack for casting a blockbuster spell remains true of 79-year-old Spielberg, who’s recently focused on prestige dramas such as “The Fabelmans” and “West Side Story.” The man has such a great time making films, and his enthusiasm pours out of every shot.
He has especially outdone himself with one spectacular stunt involving a train and a car. It’s real-looking to the point of being scary, and is right up there not only with his best locomotive sequences but his best action set pieces ever.
Williams hasn’t retired yet. But should “Disclosure Day” mark his and Spielberg’s final collaboration — their 30th — the duo goes out as masters of their craft.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
