Movie Review: Disclosure Day

4.5 stars out of 5

I love me some later-day Spielberg, but he hasn’t given us the “full Spielberg” in a long while. OK, even while I’m typing that, I’m thinking, “Wait, he wrote and directed the superb Fablemans just four years ago, and it’s basically autobiographical. How much more ‘full Spielberg’ do you want?” Fine, let me rephrase: A.I. back in 2001 – yes, Steven Spielberg made a feature-length film about A.I. a quarter century ago – was the last time he made a movie that he’d totally dreamed up himself. So when I saw the trailer for Disclosure Day and it said “Story by Steven Spielberg,” well, I was pretty excited.

Excitement totally warranted! The trailer was cool – hell, if the movie was just weathercaster Emily Blunt suddenly talking in click-clack gibberish, I would’ve bought a ticket – but the full movie is so much cooler. Certainly, the “we are not alone” concept does not originate with Steven Spielberg. But for a half century he has defined it for popular culture. If there’s no Close Encounters, there’s no X-Files. Etcetera etcetera (which starts with E.T. – coincidence??). In Disclosure Day, Spielberg takes an idea he’s addressed before, and that so many have borrowed from him – that aliens have visited us but the government has COVERED IT UP – and really runs with it.

In this story, we have an evil Department of Defense contractor company where everyone wears black and drives black cars – and they have whistleblowers, including Josh O’Connor and Colman Domingo. Josh, I wasn’t crazy about your performance in The Mastermind, but you’ve fully made up for it as Dan Kellner here. He’s a down-to-earth tech whiz who is scared out of his mind and in over his head but is driven by a certainty that he needs to do the right thing. So he’s made off with some very sensitive data.

And so a lot of this movie is a tense thriller, with that sensitive data initially a MacGuffin (not to be confused with a McMuffin). The big bad company, led by a sinister facial-haired Colin Firth, wants that data back and will stop at nothing to get it. Thankfully Emily Blunt gets to Kellner first before Firth. (Say that five times fast.) We get exciting narrow escapes and chase scenes, including a particularly thrilling car-and-train sequence I’ve never seen before.

Rounding out the excellent top cast are Wyatt “Kurt and Goldie’s son” Russell and Eve “Bono’s daughter” Hewson as our leads’ significant others who have different levels of understanding and support for the nuttiness going on. Trusty Spielberg scribe David Koepp (Jurassic Park films, later Indiana Jones, etc.) keeps the plot easy to follow (so often not the case in sci-fi), gifting us with key details on a need-to-know basis, and the dialogue feels real.

But wait, what about that trademark Spielberg wide-eyed wonder? It’s here too, but you have to be patient. Thank you, Steven Spielberg, for another highly entertaining movie with much food for thought: faith and doubt and loyalty and nothing shorter than our place in the universe.