It’s been eight years since Steven Spielberg made a big summertime movie. Back in 2018, he made the adaptation of Ready Player One, and while parts of that film haven’t aged well for me, I put most of that on the source material rather than on Spielberg’s filmmaking skill. His last film was The Fabelmans, which was pretty much an autobiopic and, before that, a fantastic remake of West Side Story. Yet here with Disclosure Day, we have Spielberg back with an all-original science fiction film covering familiar ground for him – aliens!
Disclosure Day feels like Spielberg in conversation with himself, at least the work of his younger self. Disclosure Day begins with Josh O’Conner as Daniel Kellner, a cybersecurity expert who worked for a corporation called Wardex. After stealing sensitive information from the company, which is also US classified information, he’s on the run and being chased by Colin Firth as Noah Scanlon, the head of Wardex, to get this information back by any means necessary. The cat and mouse chase between them adds a lot of great tension and momentum to the film, and its pacing.
O’Connor here brings a similar type of empathetic heroic quality he showed in Wake Up Dead Man. Daniel has the familiar feeling of a previous Spielberg altruistic yet constantly overwhelmed by wonder protagonist. Daniel has to have the wherewithal to go forward with his plan even as things look more than he can handle. He’s guided through his film by a man named Hugo Wakefield, the leader of a group of former Wardex employees who want to disclose what they have been hiding from the world. Played by the always excellent Colman Domingo, Hugo is the opposite of Firth’s Scanlon. Maybe not enough background character-wise for some, but for me, he was just enough of a character to work with this story.
He’s someone good, but also knows he was part of something harmful, and you can see through Domingo’s performance that this drives him to let the world know and do right by others. So there’s another protagonist in this film, and her name is Margaret Fairchild, played by Emily Blunt, who gives the best performance in the whole film. At the same time, she doesn’t start the film; a lot of the action revolves around her. Her life changes one day after seeing a bird, and amazing things just happen to her as we see the world crumbling around everyone.
Blunt is so natural as Margaret, who just goes with the flow, and all these weird things happen to her and around her. Wyatt Russell plays her partner Jackson, who is out of sorts the entire time. He does well on screen with her playing a pretty normal guy who you’re supposed to get annoyed with. She meets the expectations of being in a big Spielberg epic with her acting performance. Spielberg uses close-up shots in this film a lot, and both O’Connor and Blunt use them to great effect with their performances through the little microexpressions when the characters are experiencing moments of intense action or connecting with another person.
The film throws you into the world with not much setup. While you get some background on most of the characters throughout the film, you don’t get a full picture of our leads, with much of the focus on their task at hand and the mysteries to expose. I personally prefer this as I don’t always want to know all the internal workings or what exactly is happening in a film all the time. In a film that is an adventure, I like it when the focus is on that adventure. Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp are having a few different conversations in this film, with what stuck out to me was cynicism vs optimism.
Firth’s Scanlon and Domingo’s Hugo are the embodiment of this debate, with Scanlon having a poor outlook on humanity and what truth can cause, vs. Hugo’s hope that with knowledge, humanity and society can be better. That throughline goes through many of the characters in the film. From Scanlon’s forces’ complete dedication to his leadership, doing whatever it takes to whoever gets in their way. We even see it in Jackson and how he treats Margaret once her life changes into something he doesn’t understand. One relationship where this is a core dynamic is with Daniel and his girlfriend Jane, whose Catholic faith puts her at odds in some ways with what Daniel is trying to achieve. Her faith tests her, which leads to her being used against Daniel by Scanlon.
Jane is a good point of view character for the audience and is used well to explain certain things to the audience. Eve Hewson plays Jane and has some of the most tense and thrilling performance parts in the film. Her journey might be the best character arc we see in the film. It’s also helped by the performance of Elizabeth Marvel as Sister Maura, who guides and cares for Jane through this epic. Marvel brings the right type of gravitas to the role of a wise nun. The character also helps balance out a lot of the male-centeredness of Scalon and Hugo as authoritative figures for the characters.
Disclosure Day still has me thinking about hours after I’ve seen it. I’m glad I saw it in IMAX, and through excellent filmmaking craft, Steven Spielberg’s awe-inspiring visuals, and great setpieces with the right touch of humor. Disclosure Day feels like what if his kid heroes grew up and had to remember their amazing past. Almost like a sequel to a film we never saw, while touching base with his past like Hook, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and E.T. Yet it’s a film dealing with the now, with the threat of the end of the world hanging over our heads from so many different avenues. Maybe those we trust to be in charge are what’s holding us back from being as great as we could? Even though he has worries about the world, he still has hope for what we can achieve, and that was a welcome thing to see for me.
Rating: A
Level of Enthusiasm: 100%
