REVIEW:
Disclosure Day is director Steven Spielberg’s return to the alien genre. This is the man who made Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. But his fascination with aliens didn’t stop there, and in the more recent decades of his career, Spielberg also made the War of the Worlds and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (which featured aliens.) So, it’s safe to say this guy is a little obsessed with the genre, the same way that Ridley Scott is obsessed with epic historical war movies and Rolan Emerich is obsessed with disaster movies.
But Spielberg is also one of the greatest living directors of all time. Chalk that up to the movies he made in the eighties and nineties, from the Indiana Jones films to Jaws to Jurassic Park. Unfortunately Jurassic Park, back in the nineties, was also the last truly great Spielberg film. Minority Report, in the early 2000s comes close, but that’s where the line is absolutely drawn. Which is to say that this mega-talented filmmaker has definitely lost his touch.
In more recent years, Spielberg hasn’t turned out much worth remembering. A weird Video game inspired movie, Ready Player One, and a West Side Story retelling. That’s about it. So it’s nice now that he’s back in the director’s chair for a completely original movie, not based on a book or a previous movie, and also featuring a story about aliens. The problem is that the movie is just okay. It’s certainly great in the first half, but then goes on and on, way too long, the way that great filmmakers of the past generally tend to make their movies today (I’m looking at you, Scrocese.)
The first half of this movie, Disclosure Day, is all about the mystery. Emily Blunt plays Margaret Fairchild, a news reporter who comes across a bird that flies into her apartment, and then suddenly is experiencing a whole new way of life. She speaks alien gibberish on the air as a weather reporter, and when she looks at a person can tell everything going on with them and their lives. She knows people’s darkest secrets, and is willing to turn this into a means for giving advice, and helping herself get out of situations. Now, some of that is familiar territory. There are so many movies where a character knows things about people, that stun the people who are being told about their own lives by a stranger. From Groundhog Day to countless Santa Claus movies, it’s a well-worn trope. But here, it’s just a small part of the much larger mystery.
We experience the first half of the film through the relationship between Fairchild and her boyfriend, played by Wyatt Russell, who are tying to make sense of her strange situation, together. But then there’s another main character here…Daniel Kellner, (played by Josh O’Connor from Challengers and Wake Up Dead Man, the third Knives Out film.) Kellner is a scientist who stole secrets from the government. More specifically he stole recordings of aliens from a secret shadowy organization. And now that organization is after him.
The movie is on Kellner and his story from the very start. It throws you right into things, as Kellner is being chased by this organization, and meets with them to get his girlfriend back, who has been kidnapped and is being held captive by them. From there, we start learning more and more of the story of these two characters, and what Daniel has and knows, and why this organization is after him. Then there’s also Hugo Wakefield (played by Coleman Domingo,) who is Daniel’s point of contact, the man who he is constantly calling, and who is giving him advice. Domingo is perfect for this role, as the older mentor-like character.
All the while, Daniel continues to be chased by the organization, which is run by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth.) And Scanlon has a process of using an alien artifact, that looks like a wand, to see through the eyes of a person he is concentrating on, and look around the room that the person is in. He uses this to scan the room for anything that can tell him where the person is. Once he has that information, he sends his goon squad out to find the person and get them.
The alien tech is pretty cool. So are all the chase scenes. Up to a point. The move looks great, and Spielberg moves his camera around, using both practical and computer effects seamlessly. The tracking shots here, such as in a car while characters are driving, with the camera panning forth between characters talking, are terrific. They remind my of Matthew Vaughn’s flawless camera work in his Kingsman movies.
All of this is on full display in the first half. The chases include a number of cool moments, such as when a car drives through a house twice. And they all lead up to a car chase scenes where a car is knocked into a moving train, that is absolutely fantastic. By far the best scene of the movie. I feel like we’ve seen the setup for that sequence a thousand times before, where a car is being pushed into a train, but then the train finally passes and the car speeds off. But we’ve never actually scene what happens if the car does indeed get knocked into the train. Speilberg gives us that here, and it does not disappoint.
But then the movie keeps going and going and going. By the time we get to the invisible house, things are starting to feel a little silly. And the chases continue. There’s only so many times you can see this shady organization chase after and come looking for our main characters, showing up to wherever they are. This is why a movie shouldn’t be over two hours long, and generally should come in under that amount of time. It’s because the movie wears out it’s welcome. What was great in the first half becomes tiresome and repetitive in the second.
And then there’s the actual alien content. From the crop circles to the final reveal, none of it is great. The ideas are solid, (like the newscaster who watches the footage as it is playing for the first time, and gives commentary on what she is seeing,)